Fiona and I both followed Mortimer as he led us into the building in front of us. There were fewer people overall here than had been outside, but it was still fairly active.
The interior was fairly simplistic, speaking more to function rather than to impress. People bustled around us going to various places in the open lobby, others just hung around in corners. As our entourage walked by people scooted out of the way and snapped off salutes to Mortimer.
As they continued on their way they shot off inquisitive looks to both Fiona and myself. Well, more inquisitive to Fiona and disregard or annoyance to me. I checked and realized I was still hiding my level, I don’t think I had ever turned that ability off since I entered the third tier.
Not that I expected to turn it off anytime soon either. With the natural assumption of how strong elves were and the fact that no one could see my level most would, hopefully, assume that I was much stronger than them, even if it wasn’t the case.
Now that I was giving the situation some thought, it was quite strange that Mortimer didn’t seem to harbor the same callous disregard for me that most other humans did. There had been a few odd people who didn’t hold that innate hatred for my race.
Penny… and the others had been among those numbers.
I grit my teeth, the wound on my heart still too fresh to confront. I instead focused as much of my attention on the people around me as I could. I even turned off [Parallel Minds] so I’d have less capacity for idle thought.
“So what exactly will this assessment entail?” I asked, talking about this would hopefully distract me in the short term.
“There will be a combat test. We’ll also test basic literacy among other things. So there will be a couple of written tests.”
Uh oh.
Or is it actually uh oh? Now that I thought back I’d had an epiphany where I could read something hadn’t I? So maybe this would go a bit better than I thought?
Mortimer must’ve seen the confusion going across my face, “Is that going to be an issue?” The question didn’t sound accusatory at the very least.
“No, it shouldn't be. Maybe. I’ll find out when I take the tests I guess.”
He just nodded and kept walking.
We walked out of the main lobby we were in and started going down a long spacious hallway, openings in the stone walls showed large open arenas. The floor gave way from stone to dirt flooring. I say dirt, it was more like dust. Either way, I guess it was softer than solid stone. Maybe.
Inside the various rooms, squadrons were facing off against each other, large teaching groups doing drills, instructors filled a few of the rooms teaching the people inside.
It was all very surreal. It’s also felt… I don’t know. Déjà vu? Like I’d experienced this before somehow, even though that very clearly couldn’t be the case.
Mortimer suddenly turned into one of the arenas without a word. Inside was a single squad with an instructor. The squad was a full three-person team, a ranger, a man with a sword n’ board, and then a guy who looked like a stereotypical barbarian.
I’m talking huge great axe, shirtless with absolutely shredded muscles. He was probably pushing seven feet tall and 300 pounds of pure muscle. The instructor looked like a middle-aged woman who had aged well.
She wore her long black hair down, letting it fly freely as she danced between the combatants armed with only a single sword.
“Come on! Surely you all aren’t this incompetent! If you wanna make it big you’re gonna at least need to land a hit on me!”
Despite the smirk on her face, her words didn’t hold any heat to them. Or rather they weren’t said in a mocking tone. More spoken like that sports instructor that believes they can push you further because they want you to succeed.
It was nostalgic in a way.
The barbarian let out a roar and charged his way over to her bringing his axe down in an overhead swing. His axe met the ground with a thunderous slam and kicked up a storm of dust around the arena. The instructor slipped into the dust cloud and promptly disappeared from sight.
I couldn’t see the ranger, but I could still see the two melee fighters that had been standing next to each other.
Their heads snapped around as they huddled together cautiously.
I let out a sigh, Mortimer looking over to me with a slight smile.
“I’m guessing you already know what’s coming.”
I nodded, “It’s painfully obvious.”
And right on cue, we heard a yelp of surprise mixed with a little pain.
The dust slowly settled down and we saw the instructor holding the ranger with her sword at her throat, the bow discarded a few steps away from them.
The instructor let her go with a sigh, “Come on guys, you can’t leave the ranger by themselves like that. Jeremy,” She said pointing to sword n’ board, “you’re the leader, so lead. It’s okay to call out orders. You could’ve had the team working together more cohesively, that would’ve prevented this from happening. You,” She pointed to the barbarian, not giving Jeremy time to say anything, “I don’t expect thought-out plans from you. We both know that’s not happening. But kicking up a dust storm like that when your team has minimal visual capabilities as it is already isn’t a great idea. None of you can even see through the dust, so doing that only hindered your group against me. You need to be conscious of your teammates and how what you do affects them.”
She then whirled around to the ranger picking up her bow, “And you! I haven’t forgotten about you. You’re way too timid! You can’t be afraid of hitting your teammates, especially if that fear keeps you from actually helping.”
“But what if I do hit them? That would be worse than doing nothing!” She whined.
“Then get better at your aiming so it’s not a problem in the first place!” She retorted.
Mortimer took the brief window where no one said anything and stepped forward, “Katherine.”
The instructor whirled around her blade sticking out as she held a slightly suspicious gaze at Mortimer.
“You.”
He just laughed, “Me,” he nodded in affirmation.
“I’m busy, why are you bothering me?”
“Looks like you’re finishing up to me,” he said, giving a quick glance around at the people in the room.
“I could use your expertise. I have a new recruit, I want you to test them, figure out where they sit, and hopefully get them paired up with a team in the next week.”
She glanced at us, lowering her sword, “Recruit? Just the one? One of them?”
Mortimer looked over at us and gave me a nod, I stepped forward taking my time to fully take in her appearance.
She was about average height for a woman, so a bit under six feet tall, probably about 5’9”. Her black hair was still perfectly straight without a single strand out of place, despite all the fighting she had just done.
[Level 123⁴ Human]
‘Ping’ [Identify] has leveled 32 > 33
That level made the numbers part of my brain happy.
But damn, was she strong. Also, apparently, my new tier also let me know what races people were. Somewhat helpful. Not sure if it would tell me anything not blatantly obvious. Like if a certain race could shapeshift, would they ID as the race they were or the race they shifted into?
Something I probably wouldn’t find out until too late.
She gave me a once over as well, letting a hip flare out as she tilted her head to look me over.
“Huh. Are you an elf?”
“Something like that.”
She frowned, “Don’t be coy, it’s unbecoming.”
I shrugged, “It’s a complicated situation. I’m not an elf, but for all intents and purposes, I am one. Not like it matters at this point.”
Her frown deepened and she looked over at Mortimer who just gave her a neutral look. His face gave away nothing.
“Well, what’s your level? I can't see it so I’m not sure how hard I need to press you.”
Ah, right.
I turned off the ability allowing my level to be seen again.
“How about now?” I asked her.
She looked me over again, nodding.
“Alright, I think I have an idea,” She turned to the squad behind her, “You three can take a quick break. I’m gonna stick tall and handsome through the wringer real quick.”
She then turned back to me, “Alright, since I’m quite a bit stronger than you I want you to go as hard as you can. Don’t worry about hurting me, I have a strong defensive skill, but I also have a self-heal that can recover from most injuries with time. Just try not to go lethal. Do your best to make use of all your skills, the more I know about how you work the better I can determine what to do with you. Understand?”
***
The elf nodded slowly, as he understood but was still processing. Language barrier perhaps? No, he wasn’t a human so she wasn’t entirely sure but his face had the look of barely restrained grief. Something bad happened to him recently perhaps?
Maybe he was related to that ordeal in Vinwood. Would make sense with the timing and the fact that Commander Mortimer was leading him.
“Alright, do you need any weapons? Armor?”
He didn’t say anything, instead, he held out his left arm. Which was apparently wooden. A prosthetic? It was very well made and moved so smoothly that it seemed like a normal arm.
Out of the palm of the hand, two long wooden blades sprouted out. He grabbed one with his right arm and grasped the remaining one with his prosthetic. From his feet, wood swirled up his body all the way up his chest and then back down his arms.
The armor had glowing green lines that flowed across the entire set. It was intricately designed, was he structuring it all himself? Or was the skill taking control and he was just letting it run its course? Not that it mattered either way.
She ran a few sensory skills [Mana Sense] and [Aura Sense] were the important ones of her suite. Mana sense fed back an interesting array of buffs active. Defensive and offensive, but quite a bit more in the supportive area. He looked like an offensive fighter, but he had more in the way of buffs running than pure physical stats. Spellblade focus then?
Maybe, in the Seltas kingdom, it was definitely a popular path to take, specifically because of the queen and her band of five spell blades. Well, four now.
But everywhere else in the world, there were fewer between, oh sure each class had an element associated with it, but that wasn’t what made someone a spellblade. No, they were usually combinations of mage and elemental martial classes. The classes also had a focus on mana as a resource rather than stamina.
Physical fighter classes had their elements as a byproduct of the system rather than the focus of their capabilities. Their damage tended to be more physical than magical, but sometimes that was a good thing. There was something to be said about having pure raw firepower that could be utilized. Most things were resistant to physical damage, some definitely more than others.
But nothing was immune, not in the way an elemental would be immune to their own element. Elementals had a nickname because of that. Mage-killers. A fighter could theoretically kill an elemental on their own if they did pure physical damage with a little bit of the right element to bypass some resistance. But a mage of the same element? There was nothing they could do other than run.
And the elementals had some sick sense of humor in that they tended to focus mages over everything else when they saw them. No one knew if it was just prioritizing or if there was some hard-coded instinct that made them do it. But many mages had fallen to them and many more would fall in the future.
She focused her attention back on the elf just as lightning started to arc off of his body.
Hmm, interesting, but not exactly a good thing. He wouldn’t be good for stealth, in this case, lightning is way too noticeable, especially when his buffs are that bright and volatile.
The elf looked at her and gave a nod, indicating he was ready. Katherine snapped her blade up in a defensive position.
“No lethal blows, I won’t hit you below the belt, try not to maim. Understand?”
He nodded again.
Stoic. Intentionally edgy? Or a cultural thing?
“Alright then, whenever you’re ready.”
He immediately exploded into action, pointing for decisiveness.
He charged straight at her, blades coming through in a classic feint technique. Points for effort, but not exactly smart going after someone that much stronger than you in a head-on collision.
She parried the feint before he could even finish the maneuver and attempted to step closer only to immediately slam into a wall that sprung up out of nowhere. The elf jumped backward as she carved her way through the barrier. Decently strong, but not enough to really hamper her in any way.
Sparks began erupting out of him slowly filling up the area they were fighting in. Around the rest of the room, a couple of her skills also noticed plants growing. A side effect of his skill? Miasma? No. Nature. Observation? Perhaps.
The aura of the plants spoke more of support rather than offense. Those sparks on the other hand looked like bad news.
She swung her blade through one as she passed it, but nothing happened. Not even a slight shock.
The elf fired some tendrils of lightning at her, she stepped in between two of the forks and allowed them to slam into the ground around her without hurting her.
She then lunged forward looking to close the distance when something snagged her foot, causing her to stumble. As she went to catch herself a line of lightning sprung into existence at foot level and she didn’t have time to correct herself before she stumbled into it.
It shocked her pretty hard, and it hurt. But overall didn’t do that much damage, instead, it spent more time trying to lock up her movements to keep her trapped in the line of electricity.
She quickly pulled herself out of it and turned to look at him. He wasn’t moving, he waited patiently to see her next move.
Confident, strong, but not overeager. Against anyone else, it would’ve been the correct call to push his advantage. But he knew he wasn’t going to win, he wasn’t trying to. Delaying? That was the right call if he wasn’t allowed to run.
To a degree. He should still try to win though. On paper, the right call is to delay and sacrifice yourself. But the right call is to put forth every effort into winning no matter the odds.
With how he moved, he clearly had tons of experience, you don’t usually get to the third tier without it in the first place. But he seemed to have tons of experience. Experience that people got constantly fighting people higher level than them, nonstop. You could usually tell when someone got to their level by only fighting opponents weaker than them, which ones did that by only fighting monsters weaker than them, which ones were the prodigy monster slayers, and then there were those who got to where they were by killing people.
The elf was very clearly in the last group. He was no stranger to murder. Intentional or self-defense? The NSA didn’t need psychos in their numbers.
Katherine lunged forward closing the distance between the two of them, several bolts of lightning fell from the sky around her, and she only barely managed to avoid running into one of them.
Fighting him was annoying, she had been avoiding using buffs to try and stay towards his level but he was insanely strong for someone just barely in the third tier. He had the strength and experience of someone who had been in the third tier for a while. Good classes then?
She weaved her way around the lightning falling like rain and engaged the elf in melee again. She rapidly threw blows at him, testing his defense, reactions, and strength. If you’re going to have swords you need power to be able to withstand blows beyond just redirecting them.
Except…
No matter how she hit him, she couldn’t land a blow that imparted her full physical strength. He let all of them just flow off his swords the entire time and…
Her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t backing up. He was speeding up as well.
His blades arced with lightning as he continually met her blade and attacked back at her causing her to block or dodge.
All of a sudden multiple roots exploded out of the ground and erupted with balls and tendrils of lightning. The elf warped and disappeared. A space class? No, a transference skill. Very interesting. And also somewhat sad.
Something people didn’t know about the system, it was intelligent. How intelligent, no one really knew. But it was intelligent. And that intelligence of the system allowed it to give you the skills you needed or wanted in some cases. It could easily infer what was or would be necessary for you in the future to best make use of your skills.
Maybe a control skill like paralyzing if you were fighting monsters much stronger than you. Agility buffing skills to avoid sapient creatures that were stronger than you trying to kill you. Healing skills if you tend to take a lot of damage. Area control if you fought large groups.
Or a type of transference skill if you ended up as a prisoner or slave.
Katherine was starting to get an idea of his life story. You could infer a lot about a person by his skills. It took a degree of expertise and knowledge of the various ways these circumstances would manifest themselves as skills across the different elements. But Katherine had been doing this for a while.
[Aura Sense] also helped a little in that regard. The skill was somewhat similar to [Mana Sense], except it also imparted a degree of knowledge about what you were sensing beyond what [Mana Sense] did.
It did more than just tell you the school of the skills or mana being used. It whispered of its uses. Observation, empowerment, redirection, withdrawal.
It was hard to explain quite how the skill worked beyond that it just worked.
The elf appeared on the other side of the arena while all the skills he fired off converged on her position, she tried to jump out but instantly slammed into a barrier pinning her in place.
All the spells landed on her.
He was good at trapping, very good.
He used his transference to warp next to her already swinging. But Katherine was starting to get annoyed with his hit-and-run tactics. She could acknowledge he was a strong fighter. That didn’t make his tactics any less obnoxious.
She grabbed his wrist as he came in close again, making full use of her speed and strength advantages, and then whipped him around through the air and slammed him into the ground.
She heard him gasp in pain as the air got knocked out of him, she was pretty sure she heard several of his bones break as well. She knew for certain she had broken his wrist.
A bunch of dust was kicked up from her slamming him down on the ground, so she swung her sword and let it dispel most of the cloud.
“And that’s a wrap,” She announced, stepping back.
She glanced over to Mortimer and the girl who had come with the elf, “He’ll probably need some medical attention. Pretty sure I broke several of his ribs and his wrist with that last one.”
The girl instead just shook her head and pointed. Katherine turned her attention back to the elf as he was sitting back up. A glowing lily at his feet spoke of health and encouragement. A healing skill. Group healing. Interesting.
An all-rounder, and a good fit for almost any group. Tactical, good instincts. Not the best instincts, it’s stupid to stay close to someone stronger than you if you can fight at range like he could. But good enough, they could train him to be a monster in the future.
Commander Mortimer stepped forward, “So? What are your thoughts, Katherine?”
She just gave him an unamused glance.
“Don’t act like you don’t already know. He’s a monster as it is, he’ll be even more of one when we’re through with him. He’s got a couple of bad habits to break and could stand to make better use of his ability to fight at range in certain cases. But he’s a lot further along than someone of a similar level. A lot further along.”
Mortimer nodded.
“I think he has potential,” Katherine said with a slight smile.
Fiona and I both followed Mortimer as he led us into the building in front of us. There were fewer people overall here than had been outside, but it was still fairly active.
The interior was fairly simplistic, speaking more to function rather than to impress. People bustled around us going to various places in the open lobby, others just hung around in corners. As our entourage walked by people scooted out of the way and snapped off salutes to Mortimer.
As they continued on their way they shot off inquisitive looks to both Fiona and myself. Well, more inquisitive to Fiona and disregard or annoyance to me. I checked and realized I was still hiding my level, I don’t think I had ever turned that ability off since I entered the third tier.
Not that I expected to turn it off anytime soon either. With the natural assumption of how strong elves were and the fact that no one could see my level most would, hopefully, assume that I was much stronger than them, even if it wasn’t the case.
Now that I was giving the situation some thought, it was quite strange that Mortimer didn’t seem to harbor the same callous disregard for me that most other humans did. There had been a few odd people who didn’t hold that innate hatred for my race.
Penny… and the others had been among those numbers.
I grit my teeth, the wound on my heart still too fresh to confront. I instead focused as much of my attention on the people around me as I could. I even turned off [Parallel Minds] so I’d have less capacity for idle thought.
“So what exactly will this assessment entail?” I asked, talking about this would hopefully distract me in the short term.
“There will be a combat test. We’ll also test basic literacy among other things. So there will be a couple of written tests.”
Uh oh.
Or is it actually uh oh? Now that I thought back I’d had an epiphany where I could read something hadn’t I? So maybe this would go a bit better than I thought?
Mortimer must’ve seen the confusion going across my face, “Is that going to be an issue?” The question didn’t sound accusatory at the very least.
“No, it shouldn't be. Maybe. I’ll find out when I take the tests I guess.”
He just nodded and kept walking.
We walked out of the main lobby we were in and started going down a long spacious hallway, openings in the stone walls showed large open arenas. The floor gave way from stone to dirt flooring. I say dirt, it was more like dust. Either way, I guess it was softer than solid stone. Maybe.
Inside the various rooms, squadrons were facing off against each other, large teaching groups doing drills, instructors filled a few of the rooms teaching the people inside.
It was all very surreal. It’s also felt… I don’t know. Déjà vu? Like I’d experienced this before somehow, even though that very clearly couldn’t be the case.
Mortimer suddenly turned into one of the arenas without a word. Inside was a single squad with an instructor. The squad was a full three-person team, a ranger, a man with a sword n’ board, and then a guy who looked like a stereotypical barbarian.
I’m talking huge great axe, shirtless with absolutely shredded muscles. He was probably pushing seven feet tall and 300 pounds of pure muscle. The instructor looked like a middle-aged woman who had aged well.
She wore her long black hair down, letting it fly freely as she danced between the combatants armed with only a single sword.
“Come on! Surely you all aren’t this incompetent! If you wanna make it big you’re gonna at least need to land a hit on me!”
Despite the smirk on her face, her words didn’t hold any heat to them. Or rather they weren’t said in a mocking tone. More spoken like that sports instructor that believes they can push you further because they want you to succeed.
It was nostalgic in a way.
The barbarian let out a roar and charged his way over to her bringing his axe down in an overhead swing. His axe met the ground with a thunderous slam and kicked up a storm of dust around the arena. The instructor slipped into the dust cloud and promptly disappeared from sight.
I couldn’t see the ranger, but I could still see the two melee fighters that had been standing next to each other.
Their heads snapped around as they huddled together cautiously.
I let out a sigh, Mortimer looking over to me with a slight smile.
“I’m guessing you already know what’s coming.”
I nodded, “It’s painfully obvious.”
And right on cue, we heard a yelp of surprise mixed with a little pain.
The dust slowly settled down and we saw the instructor holding the ranger with her sword at her throat, the bow discarded a few steps away from them.
The instructor let her go with a sigh, “Come on guys, you can’t leave the ranger by themselves like that. Jeremy,” She said pointing to sword n’ board, “you’re the leader, so lead. It’s okay to call out orders. You could’ve had the team working together more cohesively, that would’ve prevented this from happening. You,” She pointed to the barbarian, not giving Jeremy time to say anything, “I don’t expect thought-out plans from you. We both know that’s not happening. But kicking up a dust storm like that when your team has minimal visual capabilities as it is already isn’t a great idea. None of you can even see through the dust, so doing that only hindered your group against me. You need to be conscious of your teammates and how what you do affects them.”
She then whirled around to the ranger picking up her bow, “And you! I haven’t forgotten about you. You’re way too timid! You can’t be afraid of hitting your teammates, especially if that fear keeps you from actually helping.”
“But what if I do hit them? That would be worse than doing nothing!” She whined.
“Then get better at your aiming so it’s not a problem in the first place!” She retorted.
Mortimer took the brief window where no one said anything and stepped forward, “Katherine.”
The instructor whirled around her blade sticking out as she held a slightly suspicious gaze at Mortimer.
“You.”
He just laughed, “Me,” he nodded in affirmation.
“I’m busy, why are you bothering me?”
“Looks like you’re finishing up to me,” he said, giving a quick glance around at the people in the room.
“I could use your expertise. I have a new recruit, I want you to test them, figure out where they sit, and hopefully get them paired up with a team in the next week.”
She glanced at us, lowering her sword, “Recruit? Just the one? One of them?”
Mortimer looked over at us and gave me a nod, I stepped forward taking my time to fully take in her appearance.
She was about average height for a woman, so a bit under six feet tall, probably about 5’9”. Her black hair was still perfectly straight without a single strand out of place, despite all the fighting she had just done.
[Level 123⁴ Human]
‘Ping’ [Identify] has leveled 32 > 33
That level made the numbers part of my brain happy.
But damn, was she strong. Also, apparently, my new tier also let me know what races people were. Somewhat helpful. Not sure if it would tell me anything not blatantly obvious. Like if a certain race could shapeshift, would they ID as the race they were or the race they shifted into?
Something I probably wouldn’t find out until too late.
She gave me a once over as well, letting a hip flare out as she tilted her head to look me over.
“Huh. Are you an elf?”
“Something like that.”
She frowned, “Don’t be coy, it’s unbecoming.”
I shrugged, “It’s a complicated situation. I’m not an elf, but for all intents and purposes, I am one. Not like it matters at this point.”
Her frown deepened and she looked over at Mortimer who just gave her a neutral look. His face gave away nothing.
“Well, what’s your level? I can't see it so I’m not sure how hard I need to press you.”
Ah, right.
I turned off the ability allowing my level to be seen again.
“How about now?” I asked her.
She looked me over again, nodding.
“Alright, I think I have an idea,” She turned to the squad behind her, “You three can take a quick break. I’m gonna stick tall and handsome through the wringer real quick.”
She then turned back to me, “Alright, since I’m quite a bit stronger than you I want you to go as hard as you can. Don’t worry about hurting me, I have a strong defensive skill, but I also have a self-heal that can recover from most injuries with time. Just try not to go lethal. Do your best to make use of all your skills, the more I know about how you work the better I can determine what to do with you. Understand?”
***
The elf nodded slowly, as he understood but was still processing. Language barrier perhaps? No, he wasn’t a human so she wasn’t entirely sure but his face had the look of barely restrained grief. Something bad happened to him recently perhaps?
Maybe he was related to that ordeal in Vinwood. Would make sense with the timing and the fact that Commander Mortimer was leading him.
“Alright, do you need any weapons? Armor?”
He didn’t say anything, instead, he held out his left arm. Which was apparently wooden. A prosthetic? It was very well made and moved so smoothly that it seemed like a normal arm.
Out of the palm of the hand, two long wooden blades sprouted out. He grabbed one with his right arm and grasped the remaining one with his prosthetic. From his feet, wood swirled up his body all the way up his chest and then back down his arms.
The armor had glowing green lines that flowed across the entire set. It was intricately designed, was he structuring it all himself? Or was the skill taking control and he was just letting it run its course? Not that it mattered either way.
She ran a few sensory skills [Mana Sense] and [Aura Sense] were the important ones of her suite. Mana sense fed back an interesting array of buffs active. Defensive and offensive, but quite a bit more in the supportive area. He looked like an offensive fighter, but he had more in the way of buffs running than pure physical stats. Spellblade focus then?
Maybe, in the Seltas kingdom, it was definitely a popular path to take, specifically because of the queen and her band of five spell blades. Well, four now.
But everywhere else in the world, there were fewer between, oh sure each class had an element associated with it, but that wasn’t what made someone a spellblade. No, they were usually combinations of mage and elemental martial classes. The classes also had a focus on mana as a resource rather than stamina.
Physical fighter classes had their elements as a byproduct of the system rather than the focus of their capabilities. Their damage tended to be more physical than magical, but sometimes that was a good thing. There was something to be said about having pure raw firepower that could be utilized. Most things were resistant to physical damage, some definitely more than others.
But nothing was immune, not in the way an elemental would be immune to their own element. Elementals had a nickname because of that. Mage-killers. A fighter could theoretically kill an elemental on their own if they did pure physical damage with a little bit of the right element to bypass some resistance. But a mage of the same element? There was nothing they could do other than run.
And the elementals had some sick sense of humor in that they tended to focus mages over everything else when they saw them. No one knew if it was just prioritizing or if there was some hard-coded instinct that made them do it. But many mages had fallen to them and many more would fall in the future.
She focused her attention back on the elf just as lightning started to arc off of his body.
Hmm, interesting, but not exactly a good thing. He wouldn’t be good for stealth, in this case, lightning is way too noticeable, especially when his buffs are that bright and volatile.
The elf looked at her and gave a nod, indicating he was ready. Katherine snapped her blade up in a defensive position.
“No lethal blows, I won’t hit you below the belt, try not to maim. Understand?”
He nodded again.
Stoic. Intentionally edgy? Or a cultural thing?
“Alright then, whenever you’re ready.”
He immediately exploded into action, pointing for decisiveness.
He charged straight at her, blades coming through in a classic feint technique. Points for effort, but not exactly smart going after someone that much stronger than you in a head-on collision.
She parried the feint before he could even finish the maneuver and attempted to step closer only to immediately slam into a wall that sprung up out of nowhere. The elf jumped backward as she carved her way through the barrier. Decently strong, but not enough to really hamper her in any way.
Sparks began erupting out of him slowly filling up the area they were fighting in. Around the rest of the room, a couple of her skills also noticed plants growing. A side effect of his skill? Miasma? No. Nature. Observation? Perhaps.
The aura of the plants spoke more of support rather than offense. Those sparks on the other hand looked like bad news.
She swung her blade through one as she passed it, but nothing happened. Not even a slight shock.
The elf fired some tendrils of lightning at her, she stepped in between two of the forks and allowed them to slam into the ground around her without hurting her.
She then lunged forward looking to close the distance when something snagged her foot, causing her to stumble. As she went to catch herself a line of lightning sprung into existence at foot level and she didn’t have time to correct herself before she stumbled into it.
It shocked her pretty hard, and it hurt. But overall didn’t do that much damage, instead, it spent more time trying to lock up her movements to keep her trapped in the line of electricity.
She quickly pulled herself out of it and turned to look at him. He wasn’t moving, he waited patiently to see her next move.
Confident, strong, but not overeager. Against anyone else, it would’ve been the correct call to push his advantage. But he knew he wasn’t going to win, he wasn’t trying to. Delaying? That was the right call if he wasn’t allowed to run.
To a degree. He should still try to win though. On paper, the right call is to delay and sacrifice yourself. But the right call is to put forth every effort into winning no matter the odds.
With how he moved, he clearly had tons of experience, you don’t usually get to the third tier without it in the first place. But he seemed to have tons of experience. Experience that people got constantly fighting people higher level than them, nonstop. You could usually tell when someone got to their level by only fighting opponents weaker than them, which ones did that by only fighting monsters weaker than them, which ones were the prodigy monster slayers, and then there were those who got to where they were by killing people.
The elf was very clearly in the last group. He was no stranger to murder. Intentional or self-defense? The NSA didn’t need psychos in their numbers.
Katherine lunged forward closing the distance between the two of them, several bolts of lightning fell from the sky around her, and she only barely managed to avoid running into one of them.
Fighting him was annoying, she had been avoiding using buffs to try and stay towards his level but he was insanely strong for someone just barely in the third tier. He had the strength and experience of someone who had been in the third tier for a while. Good classes then?
She weaved her way around the lightning falling like rain and engaged the elf in melee again. She rapidly threw blows at him, testing his defense, reactions, and strength. If you’re going to have swords you need power to be able to withstand blows beyond just redirecting them.
Except…
No matter how she hit him, she couldn’t land a blow that imparted her full physical strength. He let all of them just flow off his swords the entire time and…
Her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t backing up. He was speeding up as well.
His blades arced with lightning as he continually met her blade and attacked back at her causing her to block or dodge.
All of a sudden multiple roots exploded out of the ground and erupted with balls and tendrils of lightning. The elf warped and disappeared. A space class? No, a transference skill. Very interesting. And also somewhat sad.
Something people didn’t know about the system, it was intelligent. How intelligent, no one really knew. But it was intelligent. And that intelligence of the system allowed it to give you the skills you needed or wanted in some cases. It could easily infer what was or would be necessary for you in the future to best make use of your skills.
Maybe a control skill like paralyzing if you were fighting monsters much stronger than you. Agility buffing skills to avoid sapient creatures that were stronger than you trying to kill you. Healing skills if you tend to take a lot of damage. Area control if you fought large groups.
Or a type of transference skill if you ended up as a prisoner or slave.
Katherine was starting to get an idea of his life story. You could infer a lot about a person by his skills. It took a degree of expertise and knowledge of the various ways these circumstances would manifest themselves as skills across the different elements. But Katherine had been doing this for a while.
[Aura Sense] also helped a little in that regard. The skill was somewhat similar to [Mana Sense], except it also imparted a degree of knowledge about what you were sensing beyond what [Mana Sense] did.
It did more than just tell you the school of the skills or mana being used. It whispered of its uses. Observation, empowerment, redirection, withdrawal.
It was hard to explain quite how the skill worked beyond that it just worked.
The elf appeared on the other side of the arena while all the skills he fired off converged on her position, she tried to jump out but instantly slammed into a barrier pinning her in place.
All the spells landed on her.
He was good at trapping, very good.
He used his transference to warp next to her already swinging. But Katherine was starting to get annoyed with his hit-and-run tactics. She could acknowledge he was a strong fighter. That didn’t make his tactics any less obnoxious.
She grabbed his wrist as he came in close again, making full use of her speed and strength advantages, and then whipped him around through the air and slammed him into the ground.
She heard him gasp in pain as the air got knocked out of him, she was pretty sure she heard several of his bones break as well. She knew for certain she had broken his wrist.
A bunch of dust was kicked up from her slamming him down on the ground, so she swung her sword and let it dispel most of the cloud.
“And that’s a wrap,” She announced, stepping back.
She glanced over to Mortimer and the girl who had come with the elf, “He’ll probably need some medical attention. Pretty sure I broke several of his ribs and his wrist with that last one.”
The girl instead just shook her head and pointed. Katherine turned her attention back to the elf as he was sitting back up. A glowing lily at his feet spoke of health and encouragement. A healing skill. Group healing. Interesting.
An all-rounder, and a good fit for almost any group. Tactical, good instincts. Not the best instincts, it’s stupid to stay close to someone stronger than you if you can fight at range like he could. But good enough, they could train him to be a monster in the future.
Commander Mortimer stepped forward, “So? What are your thoughts, Katherine?”
She just gave him an unamused glance.
“Don’t act like you don’t already know. He’s a monster as it is, he’ll be even more of one when we’re through with him. He’s got a couple of bad habits to break and could stand to make better use of his ability to fight at range in certain cases. But he’s a lot further along than someone of a similar level. A lot further along.”
Mortimer nodded.
“I think he has potential,” Katherine said with a slight smile.
