Chapter 54, DGM-
The weather was fabulous.
The sky was as blue and wide as the ocean, like a pure piece of sapphire stone. The golden sunlight streamed past the cracks in the canopy of leaves, tracing a variegated painting out of light and shadow.1
Green-feathered birds sang nature’s song and the squirrels bustled from branches to branches as they gathered food for the winter.
In river valley village, behind the flamingo squad’s small courtyard, a secluded empty space in the forest.
This empty space was around 30 meters wide, and had been carefully tended to by the mercenary squad. The ground had been flattened, and soft sand had been thrown onto it. Wooden dummies for training, archery targets as well as a resting pavilion. There were even heavy undergrowth planted in the surroundings, filled with detection mechanisms to issue out warnings if there was an intruder.
Ever since Link had casted the ‘mysterious strength’ spell on Hank, Hank practiced his martial skill in the open space when he was free. His body was initially already very robust. When he received the warrior qi breathing method, the strength of his warrior qi had rapidly shot up. Within a few days, he had already reached the peak of level 3, and even had signs of breaking through into level 4.
This had attracted much envy and admiration from Lucy and Greedin. They could only hope for Link’s mana to regenerate quicker so that Link could work his magic on them too.
Within five days, Link had recovered all his mana.
Over these few days, Link had passed this days very comfortably. Because he did not want to be disturbed by others, he still lived inside the inn’s attic. Lucy had specially came over to help him tidy up his room, and had swept the floor until it was spotless. The cobwebs in the corners of the room were also cleared, and the mattress had been replaced with a small cozy bed. The bedsheet and the quilt were all completely new, and it smelled of the sun.2 His filthy clothes had been washed clean too, and they were comfortable to wear now.
Undeniably, having a woman to sort out your room was a very good choice.
Today, he had written until he had hit a block in his thesis, but he had succeeded in his experiment for making a new spell. The weather today was also good. Thus, he took a stroll to the mercenaries’ training area and conveniently casted ‘mysterious strength’ on her.
When Link arrived at their training grounds, Greedin was practicing archery and Hank was practicing shield moves on a heavy sandbag. Link did not glimpse Lucy’s figure.
“Where’s Lucy?” Link asked. After discussion, the Flamingo squad had agreed that Lucy would be the second to receive the ‘mysterious strength’ spell.
Upon seeing Link, Hank and Greedin stopped their practice. Hank wiped the sweat off his face with a towel, grinning. “Lucy went to the bazaar to hire people. She’ll take an hour at most to return.”
“Oh, ok. I’m not in a rush anyway.” Link nodded. “Come, let’s take this time to try out a new magic spell I just developed.”3
“No problem.” Hank hefted his huge iron shield and wielded it in front of him, assuming a defensive stance. He then burst out with earth elemental warrior qi.
Immediately, his entire body and his shield glowed orange. A layer of light like yellow congealed over his being. This was the radiance of warrior qi. Compared to the first time Link had met with Hank, the radiance of the warrior qi sparkled much more brightly. It was comparable to warrior qi of level 4 warriors.
“Good improvement,” Link praised. However, he did not forget to caution Hank, “But my spell’s power is quite strong, be careful.”
Hank was well aware of the lethality of Link’s magic. When he heard this, his expression turned solemn.
Seeing that Hank had made his preparations, Link began casting his magic. He was not as bad as to begin without warning, so he slowed down his casting speed.
Mana slowly gushed into his crescent magic wand. Magic runes slowly formed at the tip of his magic wand, and they slowly gathered into a halo of magic runes.
Magic rune halo, an important magic structure for higher levelled magic spells. Link had received enlightenment from ‘mysterious strength’, and had applied the same modularity technique on his spell.
There were there three halos in total. One was as transparent as water, another was fiery red in colour and the last one was pure white. Every one of the magic halos contained copious amounts of magic runes, looking extremely mysterious.
After the magic halo had been formed, Link’s left hand grabbed some fine powder from a pouch at his waist. The powder was iron filings.4
Opening his palm, the iron filings in his hand seemed to move slowly as if they were attracted. They swirled to the tip of his magic wand. The white colour was the metal element. Other than in the ore mine, there would be few metal elements found naturally in nature. To increase his casting speed, Link carried iron filings on his person. In this age, the iron filings were not found easily. Even the blacksmith’s store had none of them. This iron filings were gotten when he had inconvenienced some villagers at the logging area to saw the iron filings out without consideration for the price with a hydraulic saw. The 10 kilograms of iron filings he had obtained had cost him 20 gold coins.5
These iron filings were considered materials to assist with casting.6
The metal elements flew to the tip of the magic wand. The red colour of the fire element also joined together quickly with the metal element. Because the metal element was made for defense by nature, it formed a crust around the fire element, with the fire element acting as the core.7 The result was a platinum coloured iron ball a fist large in size.
When the iron ball had taken shale, the three magic halos at the tip of the magic wand began to take effect. A transparent radiance surged towards the ball of light. The ball of light began to revolve at a high speed.
The ball also began to change shape, turning into the shape of a thorn. The thorn had begun to rotate in the air.
The rotation of the thorn was so fast that one cold spot whirling air from the thorn with the naked eye. The air around it hissed.
Hank swallowed a mouthful of saliva. Because of Link’s slow casting, he had seen the entire process of how the magic had taken form. This magic spell was terrifying.
“Prepare well, I’m casting now!” Link reminded.
Hank nodded, clutching his large iron shield as he ensured his entire body was covered by the shield.
Link released his spell.
In this instant, the fire element sent the metal thorn blazing towards Hank like a bolt of silver lightning as it streaked past 30 meters of distance.
“Dang~!” The sound was like a great flood smashing onto a drum. On Hank’s shield, the yellow of his warrior qi, the red of the fire element and the white of the metal element exploded together like a firework.
Hank’s entire person was forced back a meter. His entire stance was broken and he retreated, his feet ploughing two deep ditches into the soft sand below him.
He felt a numbness in his arm. In that few seconds, he was unable to exert any strength. Glancing down at his shield, he discovered a dent the size of a fist on his 4 centimetres-thick shield. The dent sunk at least 2 centimetres into his shield.
This display of strength left Hank alarmed. He knew Link still had a glass pearl-like fireball. If Link wanted to, he could have shot a fireball and give him a shortcut to the kingdom of heaven.
“Senior, what spell is this?” The appalled Greedin who was watching at one side exclaimed. This was something Hank also wanted to know.
They had also tried to understand magic as much as possible from Link these few days, and more or less knew the basic concepts of magic. As for Link’s magic – let’s call it flame ball for now – had astonishing penetration strength. Even if it was a metal elemental magic, it still had immense power. What was even more terrifying was the metal filings that made up the exterior of the thorn had lethal power too. If aimed at a group of people, that the power displayed would reach unimaginable degrees.8
Link kept his magic wand, carelessly explaining, “I used a bit of magic technique. This spell incorporates the different fire and metal elements and some theory from the transformation department. It whistles when it shoots, so let’s call it whistle.”
This was still a level 1 magic spell, and its original prototype spell was ‘vector throw’. However, after Link had made numerous changes to it, it had changed beyond recognition, eventually turning into this spell.
This spell ‘whistle’ still had characteristics of physical attacks. Because the speed of it was extremely fast, it could hit up to 200 meters per second. Hence, its attacking distance was very far. 100 meters was nothing to it.
At the same time, it had the characteristics of elemental magic. After it was cast, Link could still control its path. Of course, because of its high speed and mass, altering the path of the magic while it was flying would not be as easy as controlling ordinary elemental magic. However, this was already lethal enough!
Even more amazing was that regardless of whether the target was single or many, it would be up to the task. All Link had to do was detonate the metal element around the fire element. The magic would then become something like a frag grenade.9
In the experiment just now, this magic’s power had also proved that it could suppress a peak level 3 warrior’s earth warrior qi.
Last but not least, the most important part — casting time. Although this multi-levelled composite magic structure was far more complex than an ordinary level 1 magic spell, after Link had practiced it over a thousand times, he could successfully cast it within 0.2 seconds.10
0.2 seconds was the casting speed limit of level 1 magic spells. The only reason why Link was able to accomplish this casting speed was largely attributed to the aid of the game system which helped to shorten the casting time by a lot. With its power, this ‘whistle’ had turned into Link’s trump card!
Hank still had lingering fear from his short experience with the spell. “Whistle? That’s a death whistle…”
Link laughed. He felt pleased because this magic was a mixture of his entire knowledge and understanding towards magic. After creating it, he had obtained 5 free points from the game system. What a jackpot!
Lucy had still yet to return. Link calmly found a small seat to sit down, casually chatting with Greedin. Greedin spoke a bit about his experience in his mercenary career and Link returned with his some basic magic knowledge.
Hank continued practicing at one side while listening to Link’s explanation of magic.
Two hours quickly passed, but Lucy had not returned.
It was becoming fishier and fishier.
“Hank, are you sure it’s only one hour?” Link frowned. It had been quite long already.
Hank’s eyebrows creased. He was no longer in the mood to practice. “Something’s wrong, Lucy’s normally very punctual. Even if there was a delay, she’d still send people to inform us. Not to mention this happens only now…don’t tell me something happened to her?”
Greedin’s face darkened. “Don’t tell me its the dark brotherhood people with a vendetta against us? Isn’t this too barbaric? We’re in river valley village!”
Although it was extremely chaotic and dangerous beyond the village, there were military patrols within the village. Furthermore, it was broad daylight. Lucy was not some feeble woman, how could they even act?
Link stood up, “Wild guesses are useless. Pack up a bit; we’re going to the bazaar to ask around.”
Lucy was his follower. Now that something had happened to her, he needed to take action.
Hank and Greedin nodded. After their fight with the dark brotherhood which ended up in the organisation being wiped out, Link had already earned their absolute trust. Now that he was the master of these two who had sworn loyalty and devotion to, Greedin and Hank followed his orders.
-Chapter 54, end-
Chapter 54, DGM-
The weather was fabulous.
The sky was as blue and wide as the ocean, like a pure piece of sapphire stone. The golden sunlight streamed past the cracks in the canopy of leaves, tracing a variegated painting out of light and shadow.1
Green-feathered birds sang nature’s song and the squirrels bustled from branches to branches as they gathered food for the winter.
In river valley village, behind the flamingo squad’s small courtyard, a secluded empty space in the forest.
This empty space was around 30 meters wide, and had been carefully tended to by the mercenary squad. The ground had been flattened, and soft sand had been thrown onto it. Wooden dummies for training, archery targets as well as a resting pavilion. There were even heavy undergrowth planted in the surroundings, filled with detection mechanisms to issue out warnings if there was an intruder.
Ever since Link had casted the ‘mysterious strength’ spell on Hank, Hank practiced his martial skill in the open space when he was free. His body was initially already very robust. When he received the warrior qi breathing method, the strength of his warrior qi had rapidly shot up. Within a few days, he had already reached the peak of level 3, and even had signs of breaking through into level 4.
This had attracted much envy and admiration from Lucy and Greedin. They could only hope for Link’s mana to regenerate quicker so that Link could work his magic on them too.
Within five days, Link had recovered all his mana.
Over these few days, Link had passed this days very comfortably. Because he did not want to be disturbed by others, he still lived inside the inn’s attic. Lucy had specially came over to help him tidy up his room, and had swept the floor until it was spotless. The cobwebs in the corners of the room were also cleared, and the mattress had been replaced with a small cozy bed. The bedsheet and the quilt were all completely new, and it smelled of the sun.2 His filthy clothes had been washed clean too, and they were comfortable to wear now.
Undeniably, having a woman to sort out your room was a very good choice.
Today, he had written until he had hit a block in his thesis, but he had succeeded in his experiment for making a new spell. The weather today was also good. Thus, he took a stroll to the mercenaries’ training area and conveniently casted ‘mysterious strength’ on her.
When Link arrived at their training grounds, Greedin was practicing archery and Hank was practicing shield moves on a heavy sandbag. Link did not glimpse Lucy’s figure.
“Where’s Lucy?” Link asked. After discussion, the Flamingo squad had agreed that Lucy would be the second to receive the ‘mysterious strength’ spell.
Upon seeing Link, Hank and Greedin stopped their practice. Hank wiped the sweat off his face with a towel, grinning. “Lucy went to the bazaar to hire people. She’ll take an hour at most to return.”
“Oh, ok. I’m not in a rush anyway.” Link nodded. “Come, let’s take this time to try out a new magic spell I just developed.”3
“No problem.” Hank hefted his huge iron shield and wielded it in front of him, assuming a defensive stance. He then burst out with earth elemental warrior qi.
Immediately, his entire body and his shield glowed orange. A layer of light like yellow congealed over his being. This was the radiance of warrior qi. Compared to the first time Link had met with Hank, the radiance of the warrior qi sparkled much more brightly. It was comparable to warrior qi of level 4 warriors.
“Good improvement,” Link praised. However, he did not forget to caution Hank, “But my spell’s power is quite strong, be careful.”
Hank was well aware of the lethality of Link’s magic. When he heard this, his expression turned solemn.
Seeing that Hank had made his preparations, Link began casting his magic. He was not as bad as to begin without warning, so he slowed down his casting speed.
Mana slowly gushed into his crescent magic wand. Magic runes slowly formed at the tip of his magic wand, and they slowly gathered into a halo of magic runes.
Magic rune halo, an important magic structure for higher levelled magic spells. Link had received enlightenment from ‘mysterious strength’, and had applied the same modularity technique on his spell.
There were there three halos in total. One was as transparent as water, another was fiery red in colour and the last one was pure white. Every one of the magic halos contained copious amounts of magic runes, looking extremely mysterious.
After the magic halo had been formed, Link’s left hand grabbed some fine powder from a pouch at his waist. The powder was iron filings.4
Opening his palm, the iron filings in his hand seemed to move slowly as if they were attracted. They swirled to the tip of his magic wand. The white colour was the metal element. Other than in the ore mine, there would be few metal elements found naturally in nature. To increase his casting speed, Link carried iron filings on his person. In this age, the iron filings were not found easily. Even the blacksmith’s store had none of them. This iron filings were gotten when he had inconvenienced some villagers at the logging area to saw the iron filings out without consideration for the price with a hydraulic saw. The 10 kilograms of iron filings he had obtained had cost him 20 gold coins.5
These iron filings were considered materials to assist with casting.6
The metal elements flew to the tip of the magic wand. The red colour of the fire element also joined together quickly with the metal element. Because the metal element was made for defense by nature, it formed a crust around the fire element, with the fire element acting as the core.7 The result was a platinum coloured iron ball a fist large in size.
When the iron ball had taken shale, the three magic halos at the tip of the magic wand began to take effect. A transparent radiance surged towards the ball of light. The ball of light began to revolve at a high speed.
The ball also began to change shape, turning into the shape of a thorn. The thorn had begun to rotate in the air.
The rotation of the thorn was so fast that one cold spot whirling air from the thorn with the naked eye. The air around it hissed.
Hank swallowed a mouthful of saliva. Because of Link’s slow casting, he had seen the entire process of how the magic had taken form. This magic spell was terrifying.
“Prepare well, I’m casting now!” Link reminded.
Hank nodded, clutching his large iron shield as he ensured his entire body was covered by the shield.
Link released his spell.
In this instant, the fire element sent the metal thorn blazing towards Hank like a bolt of silver lightning as it streaked past 30 meters of distance.
“Dang~!” The sound was like a great flood smashing onto a drum. On Hank’s shield, the yellow of his warrior qi, the red of the fire element and the white of the metal element exploded together like a firework.
Hank’s entire person was forced back a meter. His entire stance was broken and he retreated, his feet ploughing two deep ditches into the soft sand below him.
He felt a numbness in his arm. In that few seconds, he was unable to exert any strength. Glancing down at his shield, he discovered a dent the size of a fist on his 4 centimetres-thick shield. The dent sunk at least 2 centimetres into his shield.
This display of strength left Hank alarmed. He knew Link still had a glass pearl-like fireball. If Link wanted to, he could have shot a fireball and give him a shortcut to the kingdom of heaven.
“Senior, what spell is this?” The appalled Greedin who was watching at one side exclaimed. This was something Hank also wanted to know.
They had also tried to understand magic as much as possible from Link these few days, and more or less knew the basic concepts of magic. As for Link’s magic – let’s call it flame ball for now – had astonishing penetration strength. Even if it was a metal elemental magic, it still had immense power. What was even more terrifying was the metal filings that made up the exterior of the thorn had lethal power too. If aimed at a group of people, that the power displayed would reach unimaginable degrees.8
Link kept his magic wand, carelessly explaining, “I used a bit of magic technique. This spell incorporates the different fire and metal elements and some theory from the transformation department. It whistles when it shoots, so let’s call it whistle.”
This was still a level 1 magic spell, and its original prototype spell was ‘vector throw’. However, after Link had made numerous changes to it, it had changed beyond recognition, eventually turning into this spell.
This spell ‘whistle’ still had characteristics of physical attacks. Because the speed of it was extremely fast, it could hit up to 200 meters per second. Hence, its attacking distance was very far. 100 meters was nothing to it.
At the same time, it had the characteristics of elemental magic. After it was cast, Link could still control its path. Of course, because of its high speed and mass, altering the path of the magic while it was flying would not be as easy as controlling ordinary elemental magic. However, this was already lethal enough!
Even more amazing was that regardless of whether the target was single or many, it would be up to the task. All Link had to do was detonate the metal element around the fire element. The magic would then become something like a frag grenade.9
In the experiment just now, this magic’s power had also proved that it could suppress a peak level 3 warrior’s earth warrior qi.
Last but not least, the most important part — casting time. Although this multi-levelled composite magic structure was far more complex than an ordinary level 1 magic spell, after Link had practiced it over a thousand times, he could successfully cast it within 0.2 seconds.10
0.2 seconds was the casting speed limit of level 1 magic spells. The only reason why Link was able to accomplish this casting speed was largely attributed to the aid of the game system which helped to shorten the casting time by a lot. With its power, this ‘whistle’ had turned into Link’s trump card!
Hank still had lingering fear from his short experience with the spell. “Whistle? That’s a death whistle…”
Link laughed. He felt pleased because this magic was a mixture of his entire knowledge and understanding towards magic. After creating it, he had obtained 5 free points from the game system. What a jackpot!
Lucy had still yet to return. Link calmly found a small seat to sit down, casually chatting with Greedin. Greedin spoke a bit about his experience in his mercenary career and Link returned with his some basic magic knowledge.
Hank continued practicing at one side while listening to Link’s explanation of magic.
Two hours quickly passed, but Lucy had not returned.
It was becoming fishier and fishier.
“Hank, are you sure it’s only one hour?” Link frowned. It had been quite long already.
Hank’s eyebrows creased. He was no longer in the mood to practice. “Something’s wrong, Lucy’s normally very punctual. Even if there was a delay, she’d still send people to inform us. Not to mention this happens only now…don’t tell me something happened to her?”
Greedin’s face darkened. “Don’t tell me its the dark brotherhood people with a vendetta against us? Isn’t this too barbaric? We’re in river valley village!”
Although it was extremely chaotic and dangerous beyond the village, there were military patrols within the village. Furthermore, it was broad daylight. Lucy was not some feeble woman, how could they even act?
Link stood up, “Wild guesses are useless. Pack up a bit; we’re going to the bazaar to ask around.”
Lucy was his follower. Now that something had happened to her, he needed to take action.
Hank and Greedin nodded. After their fight with the dark brotherhood which ended up in the organisation being wiped out, Link had already earned their absolute trust. Now that he was the master of these two who had sworn loyalty and devotion to, Greedin and Hank followed his orders.
-Chapter 54, end-
