Chapter 14 : Chapter 14
Chapter 14: Am I Pulling an SSR Every Time?
Cyril Adrien, Half-Elf, Male
Health: 90% (Slow Recovery)
Level: 2 (18/15) ＋
Class: Apprentice Knight Squire (0/3) 【Assignable Levels: 2】
Skills: Reconnaissance (Beginner). Basic Swordsmanship 【Silverblade Knight】 (Intermediate). Basic Archery (Beginner).
At first glance, there was nothing wrong with the status panel. Gaining enough experience to rise a full level from a single battle was already a very generous reward.
But even if the beginner period had been something that lay thirty years in the past for the Cyril from before transmigrating, he still remembered perfectly well exactly how much experience those undead creatures were supposed to yield.
Skeleton Soldiers of this tier did not gain much extra experience just because they belonged to a vanguard detachment. Like ordinary ones, each gave only 2 points. The Icehide Blue-Striped Bear was worth a bit more—one bear should yield 5 points. By that count, he should have received 27 experience total, enough to reach Level 3 and still have 12 points left over.
Yet now he had received only 18 experience.
A full third of the reward had simply vanished.
“Well then, Sir Knight-who-passes-through-on-a-whim, as thanks for your generous assistance, I sincerely invite you to visit the Northwind Tower. My strength may not amount to much in your eyes, but in my capacity as a four-ring mage, I assure you that no one knows the Northwind Tower better than I do. Food, lodging, or certain more specialized entertainments...”
Cyril was still brooding over the experience he had lost, and the seriousness on his face only deepened. That expression did not escape the notice of the mage named Moum Morris, whose heart immediately began to pound.
As he spoke, he kept examining this passing knight in front of him, repeatedly wondering whether anything in his words had been offensive. It was not merely because the other party’s face was absurdly young compared to the strength he had just displayed, but because of those pointed ears—
An elf.
What elves represented to La Rochelle was perhaps something ordinary soldiers and even some mid-ranking officers did not understand. But as a mage, Moum knew that better than anyone.
Elves were one of the most important forces in La Rochelle, in military matters, commerce, and even politics. They were not people an ordinary man could afford to offend.
Of course, the youth before him might well be only a half-elf, and his status might differ vastly from that of a true elf. But who could say for certain what his background actually was? Moum certainly possessed no ability to identify bloodlines with the naked eye.
The two of them were each preoccupied with their own thoughts, though no one else could tell. Soon, the swordsmen finished sorting the spoils and carried them into the camp. One of them approached Cyril respectfully and bowed.
“My lord, these are the spoils we sorted from those damned undead. I picked out two items that looked rather promising. Please have a look.”
Only then did Cyril withdraw from the panel.
After sorting through it, he belatedly realized that this was not even the first time experience had been docked. The first time had been back in Tarp. Those three Walking Corpses should have given him 12 experience, yet he had received only 8. Just like this time, exactly one-third had been cut away.
He was certain he had not misremembered the experience values of the monsters. That meant the only conclusion was that this was one of the differences between reality and the game.
Perhaps the real world really was just this stingy.
Still, experience was not the entirety of the reward. Cyril turned slightly and looked at the items held in the hands of the Greatshield Warrior Tos. One was the standard hand-and-a-half sword commonly used by the undead, though this one was longer and more refined around the guard than usual. It was probably the sidearm of the captain of this undead vanguard detachment.
The other piece of equipment, however, made Cyril let out a small sound of surprise.
It looked like a shield.
He remembered having seen one of the skeletons carrying it in battle, but he had struck too quickly—the thing had fallen apart before it ever had the chance to raise the shield.
Cyril took the round, black object from Tos’s hands. It sank slightly as it fell into his grip, carrying a respectable weight. Holding it, he walked toward the torchlight. Just as he raised a hand to brush away the dirt crusted over the surface, that staff worth one hundred gintres suddenly entered his field of vision.
“Mr. Vey, if you don’t mind, I can clean this shield for you.”
Cyril turned to look at the female mage standing beside him, the one holding that expensive staff. She was a bit taller than he was. The hood of her mage robe had been pulled back, and her slightly wavy brown hair hung down to her chest. The robe itself was far too loose to reveal any real shape.
—So she was called Mia Christian, was she? He repeated the name inwardly. Earlier, he had been too distracted by concern over his spoils to properly remember the names of the two mages.
Wait. Christian?
That surname gave Cyril an odd feeling at once. It corresponded to a glorious legacy so great that even the royal library of La Rochelle had been named after it.
But the Christian family had long since died out. Even in the game, that surname existed only in books.
If the one he had met here truly was a descendant of that line, then this new life of his really had turned him into a seal blessed by fate.
Whether he met allies or enemies, at the very least every one of them was a remarkable figure.
An SSR with every pull.
But what interested Cyril far more at the moment was still the shield in his hands. He nodded and extended both arms, passing the shield to Mia.
The girl lowered her head slightly. The gem that shone dazzlingly on her staff almost touched the shield, and then she softly chanted something—
Droplets of water slowly appeared across the pitch-black metal. It took them an absurdly long time to gather into even a small puddle, which then moved sluggishly back and forth across the shield’s surface.
That miserable speed made Cyril frown. Without showing it, he glanced sideways at Mia, only to see that the girl was utterly focused, clearly doing her utmost to handle the task seriously.
The efficiency, however, was painfully low.
Her mana was too chaotic. So chaotic that even Cyril, a Rogue and Apprentice Knight Squire whose sensitivity to the elements was currently extremely weak, could still tell that something was wrong.
It was a mess like a ball of yarn knotted together at random, with a few dead knots deliberately tied into the middle. Straightening it into order was nearly impossible.
Terrible talent for magic.
That conclusion came to him almost immediately. Someone like this could not possibly be the descendant of that great mage family. It had to be nothing more than a coincidence of surnames.
And yet her effort could not be ignored. With the flow of water Mia produced, he wiped away enough grime to finally make out the design on the shield—
Though worn down by more than half, he could still vaguely identify a clawed bird with its wings spread wide, and two swords crossed before it in an X.
It was a gryphon—
“The Cross-Gryphon Knight’s Shield.”
He spoke the shield’s name softly, and a line of text floated up before him:
【Worn Cross-Gryphon Knight’s Shield】: A Cross-Gryphon Knight shield of exceptional defensive power, in which delicate runes and wild-forged craftsmanship are combined to perfection.
It once faced the venom of a two-headed wyvern, and once withstood giant arrows hurled against city walls. Its glory is carved upon those outspread wings.
Holding the shield in both hands, Cyril thanked Mia and could not help drawing in a deep breath.
This time, he truly had picked up a treasure.
Who could have imagined that one of the skeletons in this vanguard detachment would be carrying such an excellent little round shield?
As for what made it so excellent—in the game, this shield possessed a special trait:
Percentage damage mitigation.
Any attack it received would have fifteen to twenty percent of its damage negated by the layers of runes engraved within it. For a team’s knight, having such a shield meant the team’s safety increased by an enormous margin, offering a kind of reliable security no mere upgrade to any other piece of armor could ever match.
Even in the era of the game where Cyril had once lived, there were still many players who would deliberately stack higher defense on all their other equipment while continuing to use this shield, even though its own base defensive stats had long since become outdated.
“This shield is mine. You can keep the rest.”
He turned and said this to the Greatshield Warrior Tos. Then, delighted, he lifted the shield in front of himself and mimicked a blocking posture.
And suddenly, he froze.
Wasn’t he... a Rogue?
Then what exactly was he supposed to do with a shield?
What kind of Rogue carried a shield around to stab people in the back?!
His earlier delight instantly curdled into bitterness. The heavy weight of the shield made him desperately want to throw it aside, yet he could not bear to part with it.
“Sir Knight.” Moum Morris spoke up rather boldly from the side. “We intend to return to the Northwind Tower now. I wonder whether you would travel with us, or...”
“I’ll go with you.” Cyril kept his face calm, but his tone could not help turning listless. He waved a hand weakly, utterly uninterested in pretending otherwise.
The camp was not dismantled especially quickly, because some of the soldiers had to be assigned to break down the corpse of the Icehide Blue-Striped Bear.
Cyril held the shield in his arms and wore the longsword at his side, watching the giant bear being gradually taken apart as he yawned in boredom.
Then, suddenly, he realized he had forgotten something.
Where was Caroline?
We made it onto recommendations!