“What’s with that blank look on your face?” Verim tried to lighten up the mood. “Is there something on my face?”
“Don’t interact with him. Who knows when the two Empires will want him back? Let’s just get our money and head back home.” The man bearing the great axe on his back dragged Verim along. He understood the consequences of going against either Empire.
“I guess you’re right. Well, see you around outsider.” Verim nudged Sammuel’s side. “If you ever feel like wanting to pay me back, I’m all for it. Ouch, I’m just saying…” Something flew over and hit Verim’s forehead, rubbed it in an attempt to mitigate the pain. It had come from a girl from a distance away.
“Verim, stop acting chummy with him. I don’t want to escalate things even further than they already are now. We’ve been fighting for an entire month now, I want some peace and quiet.” This girl had a hooded robe covering her entire body. Even her face was darkened under the hood, making it difficult to distinguish what she looked like. Other than a staff by her side, nothing else was of note.
“It’s not like we will forget him.” Verim chuckled to himself yet the way that he said it made Sammuel uncomfortable.
Sammuel wanted to intervene but couldn’t. Their team dynamic was far too close to give him the opportunity to do so. Unexpectedly, Verim removed his cloak and threw it in Sammuel’s direction. It was a common black cloak that had no distinguishable features.
“See you around.” On that note, the party left Sammuel alone. They didn’t continue conversing with him at all.
Wearing the black cloak, Sammuel felt lost. Just what was he to do in a scenario like this? It was dark out with minimal light provided by moonlight. The surroundings were still filled with monsters out for blood. He wasn’t even considered a soldier here, he was completely helpless.
“Let’s find somewhere safe first.” The first thing that caught Sammuel’s eye was the clear camp in front of him. But considering that it was already occupied by a party that didn’t want to associate with him, he couldn’t intrude.
As he was directly in the middle of a battlefield, he couldn’t just make his way out of this place so quickly. Sammuel had chosen to find a man-made hole from the battlefield and hid inside, choosing this place to be his temporary shelter.
He could still hear sounds of warfare actively happening beyond this small hole. The monsters and humans continued their battle even as the greatest powers from both sides were gone. Fortunately, they were too far away from Sammuel to be affected.
Choosing to be efficient, he had opted to look at [Assimilation Requirements]. He didn’t have the time to sift through all the content before.
[Assimilation Requirements:
Condition: Reach Base Card Quality Bronze | Reward: First Kill
First Kill: The first time a creature from a species would be killed it would guarantee its Card Drop.
Condition: Reach 10 Combat Power | Reward: Increased Card Drop Rate
Condition: Gain 3 Ego | Reward: Increased Detail]
It was short. Yet from the looks of it, this was something that wasn’t inherently great. The greatest drawback was that he could only gain the Card of a creature he killed. Current prospects aside, this wouldn’t let him gap an overwhelming difference.
There had to be something else.
Killing can’t be the only way to grow stronger. It just can’t be it!
Sammuel’s mind was slightly tired but his will to understand what this world enforced him grew. Climbing out of his safe hole, he looked out all around him to try and see what people were trying to do. Seeking to gain more information, Sammuel turned back to the party that had shunned him earlier.
Within an open area, Verim was performing a sword dance all on his own. He repeated the same movements over and over again without fail. His fluid motions didn’t have any erratic movement within it, completely following a certain flow.
It was at this point that Sammuel noticed something.
[Star Quality: 2 | 19/50 | EXP: 23.3/100% -> 23.31/100%]
After 30 minutes of performing the same task, his EXP gauge increased ever so slightly. And after an entire hour of doing the same task, another realization dawned on him.
[Star Quality: 2 | 19/50 | EXP: 23.31/100% -> 23.32/100%]
Verim no longer had [Flash] active which meant that this was his raw power increasing. It was slow and steady, letting him become stronger as he practiced his swordsmanship. Sammuel learned a lot from this
Especially this one thing.
[Learned Flowing Swordsmanship | Mastery: Amateur | EXP: 0/100%]
Sammuel had unknowingly learned Verim’s swordsmanship from simply watching him. He didn’t understand if this was normal yet Sammuel ran away with it. He already learned a lot from watching Verim. There was no need to trouble him any further.
Verim looked behind him. “That outsider seems to have left. I don’t know what he was watching for but he wouldn’t learn anything important. My swordsmanship has a very intricate principle behind it that one couldn’t learn without experiencing it first-hand.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Sammuel ran back to the graveyard. It was highly disrespectful but there was nothing else he could do. He needed a sword and the only one he could think of was the longsword.
Running past the graveyard, he could see all the goblins slaughtered lay down dead. Their bodies were littered everywhere. There was nothing else left for them but to slowly decay and be eaten by the earth.
Dropped on the floor where he nearly lost his life, Sammuel came over and picked it up.
[Equipped: Rusty Longsword of a Fallen Noble | Gained Combat Power: +1 | Sammuel: 1.43]
Checking a newly added screen, Sammuel viewed it in detail.
[Skill
Flowing Swordsmanship - Move the blade according to the flow of the battle.
Card Quality: Colorless (Goblin)
Mastery: Amateur | EXP: 0/100%
Affinity Level: 0%
Combat Power: +0 ~ +5]
The Combat Power increase was self-explanatory. The only problem was that Sammuel didn’t understand what Affinity Level meant in full detail. The only clue he had was that learning about how a goblin moved increased his Affinity Level, which in turn increased his Combat Power by the slightest degree.
If the same logic applied here then the more he understood the core concept of [Flowing Swordsmanship] the greater the effect would be.
As for Card Quality, this was still dubious as this seemed to be something more important later on. As for Mastery, Sammuel could guess that it was how great his skill with this was.
First things first, Sammuel had to try out the movement out. His strength was weaker with [Ego: Goblin] but this gave him the required agility to perform such a task. Not to mention the fact that Sammuel’s body fully healed after changing it. If he turned back now, he felt like he would be making a grave mistake.
Trying out the first sword stance, he aligned the sword with his body, both parallel, aiming for the sky. Following the next movement, he grabbed ahold of the handle of the blade yet he merely let go of his control. The sword fell down before him and struck the floor. He had already failed.
[Earned 1% EXP | Star Quality: 1/100%]
[Earned 0.5% EXP | Mastery: 0.5/100%]
More and more information was getting filled in as Sammuel tried out new things. The same action did not give the same amount of EXP to both gauges but it was still a step forward. Unfortunately, his Base Ego already had [EXP: 42/100%], so getting EXP in [Ego: Goblin] just seemed to be a waste. There was nothing he could do about this.
He had only spent 2 minutes trying it out yet he already managed to get a decent amount of progress. At this rate, his [Ego: Goblin] would reach the next level within 200 minutes. This had placed it into perspective, killing other creatures was the fastest way of growing stronger.
Killing 4 goblins gave Sammuel 42% EXP which was 84 minutes worth of practice. It was stressful yet the risk appropriately came with a great reward. However, this was only based on his current experience. If Sammuel learned more and grew to further understand the essence of this [Skill] then he would make tremendous progress.
As he tried again for the fifth time, he felt that he had been doing something extremely wrong. He was merely letting it fall, he wasn’t understanding how it was falling. For the sixth time, he tried it out, the blade fell down once more yet he grasped a small aspect of the technique. He realized there was a point where the blade was falling down with the greatest speed and another point where he could easily maneuver the blade.
It had taken Sammuel twenty attempts before he managed to find that sweet spot.
[Gained Affinity Level: +1.2% | Flowing Swordsmanship: 1.2%]
[Earned 1% EXP | Star Quality: 20/100%]
[Earned 1.2% EXP | Mastery: 11.64/100%]
Sammuel’s [Ego: Goblin] didn’t seem to have shown an increase in EXP earned but it wasn’t the same for [Flowing Swordsmanship]. Granted that he had been practicing naively for 40 minutes, he finally made some decent progress.
“Affinity Level affects the EXP but… it can’t just be it. I recalled Sadin gaining 5 Combat Power out of nowhere. It’s such a simple number but the complexity behind it is beyond my current understanding. I need more information on how this works.”
Under the night sky, Sammuel continued training a technique he had no idea about. Through numerous trials and errors, Sammuel practiced the entire night. The entire time, his Mastery had been growing leaps and bounds.
[Earned 1.5% EXP | Mastery: 100/100%]
[Flowing Swordsmanship | Mastery: Amateur -> Novice]
Sammuel’s mood improved severely from this one change. He had been practicing for such a long time and had finally managed to make progress. It didn’t matter that his body was tired, what mattered was that his efforts paid off.
[Skill:
Flowing Swordsmanship - Move the blade according to the flow of the battle.
Card Quality: Colorless (Goblin)
Mastery: Novice | EXP: 0/100%
Affinity Level: 1.9%
Combat Power: +5 ~ +20]
This was an insane increase. Considering that Sammuel’s base Combat Power on [Ego: Goblin] was a mere 0.43, the increase was absolutely wild. It wouldn’t be enough to bridge the gap between those truly strong but it gave Sammuel a sense of solace. Against a normal person, he would be able to fare quite well.
Wanting to test it out, Sammuel looked at a relatively tall piece of stone. Readying his blade, he attacked it.
[Flowing Swordsmanship | Gained Combat Power: +5 | Sammuel: 6.43]
Slashing apart the rock, Sammuel felt power surge through his veins. There was no backlash when he tried to do so. It felt completely fine. Sammuel couldn’t help but continue practicing it. Redoing the movements once more with great anticipation, Sammuel pushed himself to feel the sword do well. The sword practice took longer due to how much he had learned.
[Earned 0.0005% EXP | EXP: 0.0005/100%]
It barely improved. Sammuel’s hopes were immediately dashed away from such slow progress. He had increased his Mastery to Novice but he could no longer make any progress on [Flowing Swordsmanship].
Sammuel didn’t let this hinder his passion. If he wanted to survive such a cruel world then he needed strength. Seeing that he was so close to leveling up his [Ego: Goblin], he pushed even further.
[Leveled Up: 2/10 | Permanently Gained Combat Power: +0.64 | Sammuel: 7.07]
Sammuel’s body showed no noticeable change yet he could feel it transform into a greater version of itself. Such an improvement was already much better than he was earlier. If he was forced to face such a predicament like earlier, he would be able to fend for himself much easier.
As the day’s light shone through, the ongoing war seemed to have quietened down. The aftermath of the war finished with the humans forcing all the other species to run away. With no one to lead the magical creatures, there wasn’t anything they could realistically do against the humans’ firm stratagems.
Sammuel walked over to see how the battle had concluded. To his dismay, there was nothing else there. The small encampments seemed to have been packed up within such a short amount of time.
I guess that makes sense, if magic exists, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could speed up packing up. I’ve already seen someone teleport away.
With nothing but a rusty sword in hand and a will to survive, Sammuel traveled across the barren battlefield and went on his own. He had no idea where his road would lead him but he wasn’t as lost as last time.
Giving light for all to see, the sun bared its sunlight on everything below it. Sammuel felt the warm light give him hope for the future. It was a rocky start to his adventure but it was only the beginning.