Blue held his right palm forward as he used the Wailing Sanctum skill.
The hobgoblins were the target. The same order of goblins and minotaurs from the earlier exam had been simulated during the first round. Intensity will naturally increase over time.
The skill took effect and the hobgoblins at the distance clutched their ears while groaning in their hideous voice. With the chain of command already hampered the other goblins became disharmonious and couldn't figure out what to do for a moment.
The minotaurs on the other hand charged at him with much momentum. He engaged them while multitasking to keep the Wailing Sanctum on those hobgoblins who were trying to get out of its zone.
As a “new” player, he naturally made a mistake and ended up letting the hobgoblins escape from it. So the goblins got to commence their attack properly.
He no longer used the Wailing Sanctum on others and instead used it on himself for defense against the projectiles hurled at him. This also made the quartet of minotaurs engaging him fall under the skill's effect and they suffered because of it.
His Drain Touch skill got to work as he used his bident to damage their thick hide meticulously and they soon became more and more exhausted from drained stamina.
As his degraded skill was working its effect the Blight Sense skill was being constantly used by him to dodge and shift all over the place from being hit by their melee weapons.
In public he had shown that his skill proficiency and main weapon mastery attainments were slightly lower than his already high aether attribute comprehension attainment.
To keep up the image of a top prodigy and what was considered within the academy's expectations of him, his aether attribute comprehension was revealed at the late phase of Regular stage. He reached it in just within a month thus being hailed as a genius in that field.
On the other hand, he deliberately showed an up to par progress in skill proficiency and main weapon mastery. His skill proficiency attainment was publicly revealed at middle phase of Beginner stage and main weapon mastery at middle phase of Conscious Effort stage.
Worth mentioning that within the academy all the students ranged from level 1 to 20 which was titled as Newbie Player within the player civilization and the aether attribute comprehension among them ranged within the three stages of Regular, Moderate and Adept. These three stages were subdivided into early, middle, late and peak phases of their completion.
Skill proficiency was also within three stages but instead called Beginner, Average and Exceptional stages while the main weapon mastery were Conscious Effort, Subconscious Expertise and Ingrained Instinct stages with the same subdivision of phases indicating completion.
Though his true attainments were so high that if revealed then the entire academy would turn upside down to capture him immediately and dissect him to learn of his truth, however his class level was the only thing that remained truthful to the public.
His level 1 of Blight Paladin class remained as is for the entire month.
In order to level up, a player of combat class needs to do activities related to combat thus gaining enough experience to go to the next level. This also applied to him.
Unlike the abyss spawns, holy beasts or cultivators, the players used aether in a different way. For any class, the limit of one's skill usage was equated to their total stamina. The more intensely a skill was used the further the stamina loss equaled till at one point the player would faint from zero stamina thus putting them in their most vulnerable state.
Because the academy focused on getting the new players used to the aether and their skill usage with it alongside their main weapons, the experience needed to keep further refining the aether vein through activities related to the class was deliberately ignored.
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So his level 1 was thus explained.
From level 1 to 4 it was called the Class Activation stage because of the reason that new players had to keep on getting experiences to refine their aether vein constantly to optimize themselves to their class perfectly. The name was fitting as it all involved to truly be able to activate the class in the sense that the player had not a single trace of unfamiliarity with the whole process.
After the Class Activation stage comes the First Skill Unlocking stage that ranges from level 5 to 8. All of the students' goal in this month was to reach that stage at bare minimum. As someone in the top five he obviously had to reach much higher.
He thrusted his bident at the left ribcage of a minotaur before dodging the warhammer that fell at his head. The injured minotaur had its stamina drained and he didn't let it get any chance to counterattack as he swung the bident vertically targeting its thick hide of the neck. Blood gushed like a fountain before the minotaur plopped down on the ground while squirming about as it clutched its neck. Its figure then slowly vanished as the simulation ended.
After taking down one of the minotaurs he moved around the grassland to shift his targets to the goblins huddled a bit away. The minotaurs all angrily chased after him, even their enraged reaction and subsequent behavior of witnessing their kin slain by him was perfectly simulated. This attention to detail gained a nod of approval from him.
He closed in on the melee weapons wielding goblins and kept getting rid of them while moving all over the place to dodge the minotaurs that kept getting too close. His Wailing Sanctum was cast around him perpetually as only its most basic effect of repelling projectiles were used to keep the aether consumption lower.
His Drain Touch skill took life after life of those goblins before he got to the goblin wolf riders.
He threw his bident at the closet one as he sprinted at it. He shifted the target of Wailing Sanctum to it thus causing it to momentarily falter which resulted in its wolf mount to be impaled by his bident. As he made his way to it other projectiles that kept raining down were dodged by him “barely” by using Blight Sense skill.
He gave a forward kick to the handle of the bident protruding outside from the wolf's side. The weapon further penetrated deep and Drain Touch sucked away the stamina as the beast gave a mournful howl before dropping lifelessly. Simultaneously, the goblin on the top received an uppercut from him and he used the Drain Touch on his fist to hasten its demise. The poor goblin felt its vision blurring as intense exhaustion assailed him out of nowhere.
He then gave it a roundhouse kick to send it flying in the distance, its figure vanishing shortly after.
As he retrieved his bident from the wolf carcass, which simulated the situation of the weapon being stuck firmly in it, the minotaurs caught up to him again and the hobgoblins who previously took commanding roles joined them to fight on the frontlines. He kept his previous tactic of hit-and-run as he dealt with the remaining goblin wolf riders while “hastily” avoiding that group.
After the battlefield was cleared of all mid-long range offensive means he finally engaged them.
His bident was swung horizontally to parry a greatsword that slashed at his side. He then ducked his head to dodge the mace strike aimed at his head. He leaped from the ground to avoid the sweep attack that came simultaneously before a shoulder tackle from a hobgoblin “unexpectedly” affected his balance thus causing him to take a warhammer's blow at his left shoulder blade.
Crunch!
The sound of his bone breaking was heard and he showed a pained expression but as a “top prodigy” this wasn't enough to seal his fate.
He used the momentum from the blow to leap forward and roll on the ground to avoid the incoming smash of an iron club at his chest. He retreated cleverly as he got out of the “dangerous” situation.
He huffed tiredly with a bit of grimace on his face. The access to inventory was banned so the students wouldn't be too reliant on the potions at every single disadvantageous moment in the battlefield.
Though all of that didn't matter to him as his show of exhaustion and pain was an act. His injury was real but the pain from it never registered to his brain as he turned off the pain receptor nerves right before the impact. His control over his anatomy had indeed reached such a frightening point.
His overall stamina and the equivalent aether he could use because of it was also at a much higher degree than a human as his abyss spawn soul had strengthened his physiology further. All of this oddity was naturally unknown to the academy as he long since got rid of the six weaknesses.
So, with a “very” exhausted state and his left arm crippled, he marched forward fearlessly as a valiant Paladin.