Chapter 90: Unusual Stats
For a few seconds, silence was all that reigned in the prison room, the the air thick with the smell of damp stone and iron.
The woman remained motionless within her cage of chains, her head hanging low so that her short brown hair almost obscured the jagged black iron collar around her neck.
After a long, agonizing pause, she finally parted her cracked lips.
"I don’t... actually know," she whispered, her tone devoid of any deception, yet carrying a weight of profound emptiness.
Yuan almost exploded with rage at her words. The guild master’s professional facade shattered instantly, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
His veins bulged at his temples as he took a violent step toward the bars, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists that shook with the effort of restraining himself.
"You don’t know?!" he roared, his voice bouncing off the damp stone walls with enough force to make the candle flames dance. "Didn’t you say you’ll talk when Mr. White is here, or do you think you can just play games with us and waste the guild’s precious time? We’ve waited hours for this! We’ve given you every opportunity to cooperate, and this is how you repay our patience?"
He was vibrating with anger, his ego bruised by the fact that he had sidelined his own authority only to be met with a dead end.
In reality, the guild actually hadn’t tortured her as much as they usually would when they needed to extract high-level information from a dangerous assassin who had killed an Arch Magus.
Normally, their protocols for a prisoner of her caliber were far more invasive, brutal, and dehumanizing.
Under standard guild procedure for handling "ghosts" or shadow-affinity killers, a captive would be chained naked regardless of their gender.
This was a cold, calculated tactic used to strip away a prisoner’s last remaining sense of dignity and psychological defense before the questioning even began, making them feel small, exposed, and vulnerable to the interrogator’s will.
However, Yuan had personally intervened and altered the standard procedure in this specific case.
After seeing how Noah had gone out of his way to clothe her the last time she was naked in the wasteland, the guild master had hesitated.
Yuan felt like having Noah see her naked again, especially in a state of forced humiliation within a guild cell, could make him angry.
And an angry Mr. White was a catastrophic risk the guild simply wasn’t prepared to take, especially after seeing him dismantle a grandmastee magus with such ease.
After doing so many things that they wouldn’t normally do—allowing her to keep her black shirt and shorts, granting her the specific person she asked for, and showing a level of restraint that was unheard of in the guild’s underground—it galled Yuan that she had the guts to claim she didn’t know who made her into a shadow.
To him, it felt like a deliberate insult, a mockery of the rare "mercy" he had extended to ensure the interrogation went smoothly.
He felt as though he had compromised the guild’s reputation for nothing, and the frustration was boiling over into a raw, vocal anger that filled the chamber.
Noah, on the other hand, was much more calm.
He remained standing perfectly still, his arms crossed over his chest.
While a wry smile was hidden beneath the safety of his mask, he didn’t join in Yuan’s outburst.
Unbeknownst to both Yuan and the woman, Noah was busy observing something else entirely while the guild master continued to fume.
[Name: Tara]
[Rank: —]
[Elements: None]
[Mana: 5/5]
[Health: 100/100]
[Strength: 13]
[Agility: 17]
[Stamina: 14]
[Endurance: 19]
[Sense: 6]
[Current emotions: Gratitude, Relief, Fear...]
Noah’s eyes narrowed behind the mask as he processed the data presented by the [Eye of Truth].
’No surname... so she doesn’t have a family?’ he thought.
Her stats were also a bit unusual for a "normal" human who had lost their mana channels and element, given that they were higher than that of normal persons.
While an average person might possess attributes in the low single digits or hovering around five, Tara’s physical capabilities remained in the double digits.
Her Agility of 17 and Endurance of 19 were particularly striking, indicating a body that had been hardened and honed to a degree that was physically impossible for someone who hadn’t undergone extreme, perhaps even supernatural, conditioning.
As he looked at those numbers, Noah could still vividly remember his own stats when he had first received the System.
Back then, he was just a "talentless" student, a boy whose physical presence was so negligible that he was often overlooked.
His stats at that time were far lower than even half of these; his strength, speed, and stamina had been pitifully low, reflecting a life of malnourishment.
Seeing a woman who had supposedly been "broken" and "reverted" still possessing such raw physical potential was a stark reminder of the gap between a commoner and someone whose body had been strengthened over time by mana.
It made him realize that even without magic, Tara was a dangerous individual whose physical reflexes were still sharp enough to kill a man before he could blink.
He shifted his gaze to the mana on her status window.
Seeing that she still had a little mana, specifically five points, wasn’t that surprising to him.
Noah’s studies at the academy had taught him the fundamental laws of biology in this world: even the bodies of normal humans still contained mana.
Mana was the life force that permeated the atmosphere and integrated into all living cells; it was what kept the heart beating and the lungs expanding.
Every living creature had a baseline level of energy within them, a residual pool of mana that existed as long as there was life.
The difference was that normal humans, like Tara had now become, had no mana core.
Without that central organ to act as a battery and a processor, they couldn’t channel mana through their veins or cast spells.
They were like lamps without a power source; the potential for light was there, but the mechanism to manifest it had been removed.
For Tara, the five points of mana were simply the embers of her life force, incapable of being ignited into the terrifying shadow flames she had once wielded, but enough to keep her physical form functioning.
However, what surprised him the most were her health points.
The number glowed a steady, vibrant one hundred. This was far higher than that of normal humans, whose health typically capped at ten or fifty at most.
A hundred health points suggested a level of vitality and cellular resilience that was almost unnatural. It meant that her body could survive wounds that would be fatal to anyone else, and that her recovery rate was likely accelerated by whatever had transformed her.
As he continued to scan the window, his eyes drifted toward the very bottom of the display.
There were also the emotions listed under the stats, providing a real-time map of her psychological state. Noah was sure the gratitude she was feeling was towards him.
In her mind, he wasn’t the enemy who had defeated her, but the savior who had torn away the "shadow body" that had been a curse upon her soul.
The relief he saw reflected in the status was equally clear; it was the profound sense of peace at her finally being human again, a feeling of shedding a heavy, suffocating skin that had been forced upon her.
What he found strange, however, was the fear among the emotions.
Noah couldn’t help but wonder what she was afraid of. Was she terrified of the guild’s dungeon? Or was it something deeper—a fear of the people who had turned her into an assassin in the first place?
Noah felt a sudden curiosity about the man standing next to him.
The guild master was silently fuming beside him, his face a tight mask of suppressed rage and professional frustration.
Noah scanned his also using [Eye of Truth], a set of tabs appearing before him.
[Name: Yuan Belcroft]
[Rank: Master (high)]
[Elements: Earth]
[Mana: 420/500]
[Health: 200/200]
[Strength: 17]
[Agility: 14]
[Stamina: 18]
[Endurance: 19]
[Sense: 21]
[Current emotions: Frustration, Fear, Respect...]
Noah’s eyes narrowed as he compared the two status windows.
’I was right... her stats are indeed far higher than that of a normal humans,’ he thought to himself with a sense of grim confirmation.
Tara, a woman who had no rank and no element, had a Strength of 13 and an Endurance of 19. Looking at Yuan, a high-level Master Magus and a seasoned veteran, her numbers were shockingly close to his.
Yuan’s Strength was 17 and his Endurance was 19. This meant that physically, Tara was almost on par with the leader of the guild.
The only reason she had been defeated and captured was the loss of her mana and the overwhelming weight of the chains.
Seeing Yuan’s emotions was also enlightening. The frustration was obvious, given the lack of progress in the interrogation.
But the fear and respect were more subtle. Yuan was afraid of "Sir White," terrified of the power that could strip a magus of their core. Yet, that fear was tempered by a deep respect for the strength Noah projected.