Chapter 44: A Defective Version!
If Laura's aura focused on single-target killing and speed, then Josh's aura focused on raw power and widespread destruction. Kaiden looked at his skills information — and just as he had guessed, every one of them was centered on amplifying his destructive force.
The first skill, "Mountain Descent." Simply put, upon activation, the weapon's weight would multiply several times over — up to a maximum of ten times its original weight, with three stages of the skill, the ten-times multiplication being the third stage.
Kaiden looked at Josh's enormous sword. It already looked tremendously heavy even without activating the skill. With it activated, the result would be terrifying — true to its name, it would be like a real mountain descending upon enemies, a strike nearly impossible to withstand.
As for "Full Burst," it was another devastating attack. Upon activating the detonation point on the blade's edge, an explosive effect would occur the instant the blade made contact with the enemy.
The third skill, "Berserk," was a passive skill requiring specific conditions to trigger. In the heat of battle — when the user had sustained multiple injuries — they would enter a berserk state that multiplied their current power several times over for a limited period, its duration dependent on willpower. It also carried a side effect: after the berserk state ended, the user would enter a period of weakness that depended on how long the skill had been active.
After reviewing both heroes' status boards and their class skills, Kaiden's gaze shifted as he looked at his soldiers — and it had filled with a warmth that saw them as precious treasures.
Kaiden called out to Casper, who was standing nearby: "Casper, prepare a simple testing ground."
"Understood, my lord!"
Casper needed no further instructions. He was a person of high emotional intelligence. The moment he heard the Lord's words, he grasped at once that he needed to set up a quick testing ground suited to both an archer and a warrior wielding a massive sword.
His mind immediately began working at full capacity. The right location. The required materials. The number of available people he would call upon to prepare the ground. The relevant workshops he would visit and what he would request from each. Everything was assembling and layering itself within his mind with stunning fluency — and throughout all of this, his steady, swift footsteps didn't slow for a single moment.
Kaiden nodded with satisfaction upon watching Casper disappear quickly. More than anything else, he loved capable subordinates.
He then turned to his soldiers.
"Laura, Josh — what are we waiting for? I know you're both eager to test your strength. Let's go!"
His words were addressed to both. Laura had just risen to the Champion class moments ago, and Josh — though he had been summoned already at this rank — had yet to gain any experience in it, as shown on his status board.
"Yes, my lord!" Both answered in unison, enthusiasm evident in their voices.
At this point, as Kaiden and his two heroes began walking, a system notification appeared without warning — as was its habit.
[System Notification: Territory residents' cumulative experience has reached 1,000 points. You have gained 100 experience points.]
Immediately followed by:
[System Notification: Your level in the Nascent Mage class has been upgraded to Level Nine. You have gained +10 Intelligence points, +5 free trait points.]
Kaiden stopped in his tracks at the unexpected notification. He closed his eyes for a moment, absorbing the wave of mental clarity that washed over him. An increase in the Intelligence attribute was always accompanied by this distinctive sensation.
Both Laura and Josh stopped and looked at Kaiden in confusion.
His pause lasted only a matter of seconds. He absorbed the new Intelligence points and distributed the free trait points as usual. When he saw his two soldiers watching him with puzzled looks, he smiled.
"Nothing. Let's keep going."
Gaining a level was a simple enough occurrence. They continued walking, and before long arrived at the testing ground.
Casper had been ahead of them for some time. When they arrived, the preparations were nearly complete. They waited five minutes or so until the villagers, under Casper's efficient direction, finished setting up and cleared the testing area.
Kaiden looked over the ground. It was completely simple, but it served its purpose. There were wooden and iron targets scattered at varying distances: 100 meters, 150 meters, 200 meters, 250 meters, and 300 meters as the furthest.
Calling them "targets" was perhaps a slight exaggeration. They were nothing more than posts with small round pieces of iron and wood attached, with rough red circles drawn on them as aiming marks.
Kaiden noticed the marks were scattered unevenly — some in the center, some on the sides and outer corners. He wondered where Casper had gotten the red color for the targets. Most likely from the paper and ink workshop he had acquired previously, or one of the other workshops. Or perhaps they had simply used monster blood.
Unfortunately, there was nothing like moving targets available. With those, the test would have been far more exciting.
In any case, Kaiden turned his head. On the nearby side stood thick wooden posts tied together, human height. If the distant targets were meant for Laura, these were for Josh. There were also iron targets to test multiple layers of force.
After confirming everything was in place, Kaiden gestured toward Laura.
"Laura, we'll start with you. Don't hold back. I want to see just how powerful Champions are."
"Understood, my lord!" Laura nodded firmly, her blue eyes blazing with the light of challenge.
Since the promotion, she had felt as though she were discovering this world anew. There were countless colored points of light that she could sense even with her eyes closed — hundreds, even thousands of different types and colors of light points.
But she felt a special connection with one type in particular. These points were a pale green, drawn toward her like children who had finally found a long-lost mother.
The green light points touched her body and dissolved, seeping inward and transforming into green energy that flowed through her veins, all the way to the side of her heart — where a small seed had been planted. If the heart's function was to pump blood, then this seed was a second heart pumping pure green energy, drawing it in from the outside and refining it.
Laura drew a deep breath and stepped several paces forward. Nothing remained in her field of vision but dozens of scattered targets. All of them were clear — even the furthest target appeared as though it were only 20 meters away, not 300. That was the passive skill "Hawk Eye" doing its work in silence.
She didn't even need to calculate the wind's movement. She understood instinctively and immediately the best way to move her bow — for the advancement didn't merely add a class and skills, it was a comprehensive enhancement of all physical attributes, perception among them.
Laura had never felt anything this extraordinary before. So she needed a few seconds to grow accustomed to this new sensation.
After that brief pause, she drew an arrow from her quiver, placed it on her new bow, and pulled the string. As she did, a faint frown crossed her face, expressing mild displeasure. But she suppressed the feeling temporarily.
And although she instinctively felt she could use the green energy in various ways to enhance the quality of her attack, she resisted that impulse. She wanted to test her physical quality first, without the energy's involvement.
As mentioned, Laura needed no aiming or calculation. The moment the arrow was drawn, she released it.
"Fwshhhh!!!~"
"Donnngg!!~"
When the arrow flew, a loud sound of tearing air rang out. And instantly, the sound of impact followed. There was no gap in time between the moment of release and the moment of contact — everything happened in a fraction of a second. And though Kaiden had been watching with full concentration from the moment of release, even with his heightened perception, he barely caught a black streak that vanished immediately — and then the loud ringing sound followed.
Laura had chosen to strike the medium iron target at 200 meters. In her view, there was no point hitting the closer ones.
A villager stood ready to one side. After Laura's shot, he was stunned like the rest of the spectators — but he remembered Casper's instructions and broke into a run toward the target. In truth, though he hadn't seen the arrow at all, identifying the right target wasn't difficult. The moment of impact had snapped the thick wooden post clean through the middle, sending the upper section carrying the target flying several meters backward. Finding it was easy enough.
When he returned, the villager respectfully handed the Lord the broken wooden post carrying the target. Kaiden thanked him and looked at the circular target. It was small — barely the size of a palm. There was a red circle the size of a coin drawn at the very edge of the target disc. And lodged dead center of it was an arrow.
Kaiden noted that despite the iron target's small size, it was roughly three or four centimeters thick. And yet, despite the distance, the arrow had penetrated it cleanly.
He flipped the target over. The iron arrowhead on the other side was severely deformed — beyond any possibility of reuse. This was truly tremendous power. It had surpassed the force of cold weapons entirely and reached the territory of firearms outright.
Kaiden looked at the target, then at Laura's pale, delicate-looking arms — and found himself wondering where such power came from. As he did, he looked at Laura's face and found her lost in thought, not looking particularly pleased with the achievement. There was in fact a faint frown on her face.
"Laura, what's the matter?" Kaiden set aside the praise he had been preparing and asked instead.
Laura snapped out of her reverie. She made no attempt to conceal anything from the Lord. She weighed her words and spoke: "My lord, I was only able to use roughly half my physical strength. While drawing the string, I could feel that any more pull than that would be too much for my bow to bear — either the string would snap or the bow would break."
Kaiden was surprised by this answer.
Without using Battle Aura. With all that power. And that was only half her strength?
If she had a weapon that could withstand it, and with Battle Aura active on top of that — just how great would the power be?
He quickly grasped what this implied. Under these conditions, without proper equipment, Nascent Champion-tier soldiers could only use half their strength. Which meant they were still a defective version of the Nascent Champion rank.
But the problem was — even the defective version of them possessed power this staggering.
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— End of Chapter Forty-Four —