Chương 16: Chapter 15 - Tier 1 Upgrade

Rather than leaving openings for her to exploit, he kept his sword closer to his body, always ready to parry. She watched for a mistake, and after a few more exchanges, she saw one. After an attack, he left his left side open to a parry, which she took full advantage of. Stepping away from his attack, she twisted slightly to try and land a hit on his left shoulder. She was surprised when he rolled his body sideways just enough for her sword to miss, and brought his own blade back in for a hit to her left thigh.

Their swords were sheathed, but the hit still hurt. Hank was strong, and they were swinging their blades pretty fast.

"Watch out for feints!" Jeff called from the side.

"Your opponent might trick you into thinking they have a weakness, when really it's a trap. Don't perform an attack unless you can still defend yourself, even if it looks like a sure thing." Kiara's mind worked fast enough from her increased Mind stat that she had seen the trap happening in real time, but her body had already committed to the attack, so she hadn't been able to react in time. She wiped sweat from her brow and fell back into her basic defensive sword form.

Her leg was still smarting from the hit, and she found herself unable to move quite like she wanted to. Hank took full advantage of the weakness and landed another shot on her other leg. Kiara collapsed onto the ground and waved her hands in defeat.

"Alright, you got me!" Even though her legs hurt, she was smiling ear to ear. That was the most fun she'd had in a long time, in either body. Hank was smiling too, and extended a hand to help her up.

"Nice work! Your forms are nice. A little basic, but you know them well. You should work on transitioning from one form to the next. Changes in your opponent's stance might be better countered by a form you're not in, and it's important to be able to transition without opening up any weaknesses." Kiara nodded as she got up.

"Thanks! I appreciate the help. I enjoy swordfighting, and am trying to get better at it." Jeff nodded as he came over.

"Hank and I enjoy it too, that's why we practice together. Feel free to come join in whenever you see us sparring. Most of the other guards prefer spears, and a few use maces or axes. Captain Forlick is a swordfighter too, but she's a tier 2, so it's hard for us to keep up with her."

"Have you tried joining an academy?" Hank asked. Kiara shook her head.

"I haven't heard of any."

"Most big cities have one or two," Hank replied with a far-off look in his eye.

"Some true masters of swordsmanship train at the academies, if you're really interested in learning it. Jeff and I have fun, but we're just hobbyists in reality. If you're saying you've only been practicing for a few days, then I'd say you've got quite a bit of natural talent. It might be worth checking one of those academies out." Jeff nodded, then got an excited look in his eyes.

"You could even qualify for some tournaments, I bet. A lot of academies have schools in multiple cities, and they'll do tournaments every year." Kiara laughed.

"Well I don't know about being good enough for any tournaments, I can't even beat you two, and you're just self-proclaimed hobbyists." * The next few days consisted of more of the same. Royal bluff in the wagon during the day, and sword sparring with Hank and Jeff at night. Kiara found that as Dustin explained principles of strategy to her, she understood them fairly easily, and was able to implement them without too much trouble. She quickly became the second best player in the wagon train.

Travelers in the other wagon heard about the game, and soon began rotating which people sat in which wagon during the day so that they could learn from Dustin as well. Kiara had never heard of the game before she inherited Shian's body, but apparently, out this way, everyone knew what it was. Similarly, when she practiced sword sparring at night with Jeff and Hank, she found that she picked up their training quite quickly and was able to implement it on her first few tries.

They were both impressed with her rate of improvement. Unlike Royal Bluff, she was far from becoming the second best swordsperson in the camp. While she learned new concepts quickly, it took time to practice them enough for them to start feeling intuitive and natural. It was easy to see that Jeff and Hank both had years of experience under their belts.

She would oftentimes watch them spar for a bit, then rotate in for a few rounds to try and learn something new and implement it, then she'd move off to the side and practice the movements until they felt more natural. Then she'd watch them spar again, and try to see when they used the techniques they'd taught her. Some of the other guards would come spar with their own weapons of choice sometimes too, and Kiara got to see a little bit about how those weapon forms differed from the sword.

She even saw Captain Forlick occasionally hovering nearby, watching her guards train. They didn't set up camp each day until the sun was going down, but the mercenary unit travelling with the caravan as guards had magic spheres that glowed brightly at night. They would hang them up after dinner for sparring sessions, and then put them away when everyone went to bed. Having purchased an enchanted ring, Kiara knew how expensive enchanted items could be, and wondered how much those rocks might have cost.

Maybe they used mana more efficiently than her storage ring, and weren't as expensive to operate as she was thinking they might be. * A few days went by before they stopped at the first large city along the way. They had passed plenty of small towns, and even a smaller city, but the travelling merchant caravan only stopped in the larger cities.

Large cities had the population size and financial stability to trade goods in large quantities, which is what this particular travelling caravan specialized in, given the long distances it travelled. From the large cities, other merchants would take smaller loads to neighboring cities or towns. This was good for Kiara's timeline, since it meant less stops along the way. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

While they had already paid for passage on the caravan, lodging at night in the cities wasn't covered. They could sleep in the wagons or with the camp if they wished, but Dustin made sure to rent the nicest room he could find instead in the city. Kiara wondered if she should have been a little bit more discreet with her spending. Dustin seemed to think she was made of gold coins by this point. She laughed to herself when she realized that he wasn't too far from the truth.

The caravan was only spending a single night in the city, so Kiara splayed out on the large, comfortable bed in her room at the inn. She was going to enjoy every minute of this that she could. As she laid there, she remembered something. The last time she had checked her class description, it had said she would advance to tier 1 in 5 days. That was over 5 days ago. She pulled open her class description. As things tend to malfunction when you are around, you have been granted the class of Anti-Mage.

Basic magic won't affect you in the same way it does other people. As you grow stronger and advance through the tiers in your class, you will gain other abilities as well, pertinent to your new tier. Current tier: 0 Advancement through the tiers of your class will be time based. Next advancement: 0 days. [Upgrade to tier 1] She mentally selected the option to upgrade to tier 1, and was rewarded with a new page of text. New abilities: [Magical Sense 2] Sense life forms around you, down to the size of insects.

You have a general sense of the size and location of each life form. Range: 30 feet (modified). Rewards + 1 reward point +135 Stats points. Next advancement: 3 months Along with the new page of text, Kiara was bombarded with information from her new ability, [Magical Sense 2]. She could sense every life form within a 30 foot spherical radius around here. The amount of information was mind-numbing at first, but she quickly adjusted to it.

Like a blind person seeing for the first time, or a deaf person hearing for the first time, receiving a sudden influx of information from a new sense was overwhelming at first, then exhilarating. She was suddenly aware of every living animal and insect around her. The image that her magical sense radar gave her wasn't very distinct. For instance, she couldn't tell what someone's hairdo looked like, but she could tell where they were and what they were doing. She knew someone was sleeping in the room below her.

She knew that Dustin was sitting at the desk in the room next to hers. She even knew where the spiders were hiding under the baseboards in her room. It would take some getting used to, but she was glad that she had upgraded her Mind stat to the max already. She was sure it would help her acclimate to this new ability. She was curious why she had received the level 2 version of the ability right away, without ever seeing the level 1 version. She was also curious why the range had been modified to 30 feet.

Was the range for the normal [Magical Sense 2] longer or shorter than 30 feet? The irony was not lost on her that she had received a magical sense ability as part of her 'anti-mage' class. She found that she could kind of 'turn up' or 'turn down' the amount of information that she was receiving from the ability based on how much she chose to focus on it. She could even ignore it completely if she chose, returning her to a similar state as before she had gained the ability.

She idly wondered if she used her [Invisibility] ability, would someone with a magical sense still be able to detect her? If so, it rendered that ability even more useless than she had thought. She was truly indignant that she had spent two full points on it. Excited to master the new ability, she determined that she would play around with it more after she upgraded her stats.

She opened her stats page: Unspent Points: +135 Strength: 74 (Suggested +40) Mind: 100 (MAX) (Suggested +10) Endurance: 40 (Suggested +10) Healing: 15 (Suggested +35) Sleep Fatigue Resistance: 20 (Suggested +5) Food / nourishment requirement: 20 (Suggested +10) Durability: 20 (Suggested +10) Life Expectancy: 61 (Suggested +15) Huh. The suggestion to increase her Mind stat by 10 points was strange since it was already maxed out.

She wondered if the suggestions were simply relaying the amount that the World Engine would have increased each stat automatically, had she not been given the ability to control these upgrades herself. If so, she wondered where it got those numbers from. Maybe it referenced how much someone in the mage class would be augmented in each category when they upgraded to a new tier.

Kiara wanted to increase her Strength again, as that had been a huge boon the last time she allocated these points, but she wondered if it was linear, or if she would see decreasing returns as the stat went higher. Was a Strength of 80 twice as strong as a Strength of 40, for example? Her last upgrade had taken her from 20 to 74, almost quadruple what it was before. It certainly felt like she was more than three times as strong and fast as before.

To get that same proportional increase again, she would need to bump her Strength to 274, and she didn't have enough points for that. She also wondered if having her Strength too high, with a corresponding Durability too low, would be detrimental. Would she injure herself by moving too fast for her own body to handle? Her sparring sessions with Jeff and Hank were fresh on her mind, and she wondered if increased Durability would make the impact hurt less when they struck her.

Mind was maxed out, and she didn't really see a need for Endurance right now. Then again, she did get winded in her sparring matches with Jeff and Hank, so maybe some increased Endurance would do her good. With Healing being so low, doubling it was easily within reach, and she figured that would be a good thing. Having her pain recede twice as fast and her subsequent bruising and sore muscles heal twice as fast would help her in her training.

Sleep Fatigue Resistance and Food / nourishment requirement both seemed like things that held situational value, but which she didn't need right now. She would be bored if she was up at night by herself, and eating was a good time to bond with her fellow caravaners. More importantly, points spent in either of these categories would be less points she could spend in areas that she really wanted, such as Strength and Durability. Lastly, Life Expectancy wasn't something that interested her at all.

61 was a long way off, and she had more important things to worry about right now. She got out a piece of paper to plan out her point allocations.