Chương 80: Chapter 77

Swordmaster (Exceptional) - Increased strength and dexterity while having a sword equipped in your main hand. Damage dealt by swords is greatly increased. (Uncommon upgrade) - Damage dealt by your weapon is increased if you halt all motion for a minimum of one second after dealing damage with your sword. Damage increases the longer you remain still up to five seconds.

(Rare upgrade) - Qi Strike: While drawing your sword out of its sheath and attacking, your attack gains a wide area of effect at the end of your movement. (Exceptional upgrade) - Gain a passive master-rank field of control. Leon's boon came with a four goddamn-part whammy. The main boon itself was like a discount version of what Wade's current Water Mastery Boon could do. Except the turn on trigger was significantly less difficult to do. Leon just had to hold a sword with his right hand.

Although knives didn't count. Anything under ten inches or so started seeing no results. The increased strength and dexterity were a whopping two points each, meaning just having a sword in hand made Leon four points stronger. He could start bending metal. The increased damage appeared more like a faint glowing blue over the blade, which Selena recognized as a standard damage increase enchantment, like Leon's impact hammer. Except it didn't seem to draw any mana requirement from Leon, and seemed far more passive.

The actual damage increase was unknown, but Leon did say he bought some firewood logs the moment the stores opened up, so he could chop and test. It felt easy but not completely smooth like cutting butter. He still needed to swing. The speed increase that came with strength was the real winner however. That didn't translate to just slashing speed. It was also running speed, kicking speed, punching speed, and so forth - all with far higher dexterity.

For someone like Leon that already had quick mind-body training with boxing punches and movement, it was a ridiculous upgrade. The uncommon upgrade was just straight rule of cool as far as Wade could tell. Leon made some tests against the firewood and discovered that the slice he'd delivered deepened and grew as he stood still. It seemed to act more like an additional damage over time applied. The timing window here felt pretty short.

But five seconds standing still was an oddly long time in practice, and holding still in a fight for even a second was a tall order. Little bit dangerous, but Leon was able to start moving again whenever he wished, so he could abort the aura farming if his enemy was still going to survive. The rare upgrade was just triple stacking on all this.

If Leon attacked with his sword while drawing it out of the sheathe, at the end of his attack, there would be a spherical explosion of air slashes all around him, shredding everything indiscriminately. He'd tested it outside on a grass field, and it had blown a circle around his feet, flattening out the grass. Problems: It did indiscriminate damage to everything around him, friend or foe.

And unlike in video games, it was really hard to unsheathe and attack in the same movement using a european longsword in real life. Of which he'd tested, it had to be all in the same movement, since the moment he stopped moving, the ability would automatically trigger.

He could delay the trigger by unsheathing, spinning around on himself in the motion and continue the spin a few times over before attacking, which made him look extremely silly up until he completed the attack, after which a whoosh of white air-slashes chopped everything in a sphere around him. There were a lot of ways to abused that in a fight and catch the enemy by surprise. Wade was outright giddy at the thoughts. When Leon arrived here in LA, there was some testing to do.

Damage also seemed proportional to his hit, which meant there was some good min/maxing directions on empowering that singular hit to deal craptons of damage so that all the wind slashes around him would equally deal the same amount of damage. Leon considered getting a shorter sword with an more smooth sheath, since trying to sheathe and unsheathe his sword mid combat was going to be real tough.

He had been attempting to figure out what the System considered a sheathe and so far the System seemed pretty irontight with the definition: Something that covered the entire blade and protected it from the elements. Maybe there was a direction on this. Such as something that automatically sheathed and unsheathed the blade for him. Possibly with every swing. Engineering might have the solution here. But the last upgrade to the boon was what made this a little bit ridiculous.

Because the Qi Strike thing was complete bullshit according to Selena; she'd never heard of such thing. The best she could imagine was using mana to slice through the air. It would require intense focus to shape mana outside his body, and to do so several hundred times all at the same moment. But 'field of control' was something Selena knew about. Extensively. And that discussion almost ran them almost past the 3pm meetup time with Jason.

They'd tried to make it to Jason's house in time, but even at a jogging speed they weren't going to be at 3pm. So Eri eventually just yanked Wade off the street, held him on his shoulder and started sprinting. The skeleton was clearly strong enough to carry a giant fuck-off sword, a scrawny malnourished ex-retail worker was hardly a challenge. That overly-long discussion with Selena had revealed an entire sub-genre of spellcasting specifically trained and done by soldiers fighting in melee range.

If mages were all about training mental resistance and hyperfocusing efficient spellcasting, field of control was the warrior version of that. Mana really was just a basic tool used by everyone in that world, and all kinds of different fields used it in different ways. It still spun in Wade's head, up until they climbed the metal stairs to Jason's apartment, each step rattling the wobbly steps. Eri followed behind, his footsteps eerily silent.

Without his giant sword, and without all the stuff they'd been carrying from the store up till now, a human skeleton didn't weigh all that much. They'd dropped it all off at his house before the mad sprint to get here in time.

"Remember," Wade said over his shoulder, speaking in elvish.

"Be chill. Nonchalant. You know what nonchalant means?" Eri tapped his chin a few times. He then gave a thumbs up, and immediately spun in place, before tipping his hat dramatically.

"That was… actually kind of smooth." Eri clicked his jaw, then did a few Nathir gestures for time and boredom. They might have been slaves caught in a murder death-dungeon, but there was surprisingly quite a lot of downtime, if Wade understood the skeleton right. Then Eri twirled on himself again, hands moving with clear practice and speed as he knocked an actual tune and rhythm on Jason's doorway.

"Oh you little di-""Wade? Is that you?" A voice called from inside.

"Yeah, it's me." Wade said, then turned to Eri and stared him down.

"Jason's gonna freak out enough as it is. Let's ease him into the whole 'undead warrior from another dimension' thing." The skeleton shrugged, walking to the window. Then adjusted his fedora to what he probably thought was a rakish angle. It mostly just made him look like someone hopelessly lost on the way to a comic convention, and Wade had somehow ended up mixed into it all.

"How do you even know how to angle that thing?" Wade hissed out. But then he heard wheels on the other side of the doorway and a click in the door.

"It's open." Jason said.

"All right buddy, come in." Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Wade pulled the door to find Jason rolling back to his desk, red pen in hand, surrounded by stacks of papers while his PC monitor had a bunch of stock market looking lines, and his trusty excel sheet opened up on the other monitor. The usual den of this particular creature, Jason was always working on something. Or itching to.

Wade loved his spreadsheets to plot out optimal build paths, and Jason loved his spreadsheets when it came to actually useful things in life.

"Glad to see you." Jason said, then his eyes snapped to Eri walking behind Wade.

"Didn't know there was a con happening. Usually I'm up to date on those."

"Less costume, more cover." Wade said, looking over to Eri. The skeleton walked in, looking all over the room. This was the third human building he'd walked inside of, and he was still just as curious. Wade's home had been pretty minimalist, the store had been the exact opposite, and Jason's room was a mix of the two. Jason squinted at Eri.

"Uh, sure... He can come in if he wants, make yourselves at home." Eri took that as full permission to start harassing just about everything he could get his gloved hands over.

"I remember our call yesterday. Insane story, you said." Jason asked Wade, turning back to his grading papers.

"Had to see it in person to believe it. Didn't know you'd bring a plus-one though. Who's the mystery man?"

"Right. Jason, meet Eri. Eri, this is Jason." Jason rolled slightly forward, and extended a hand out. Eri looked down at the hand, his blessing feeding him the context about that, then he took a fast step forward and extended a gloved hand. He seemed gleeful about it. Nathir didn't do handshakes, they did a sort of pat crossed with a jab as a hello.

It could quickly be turned into a shove or a punch, which is probably the point of it, and reaching that far out to touch a shoulder meant going into someone else's personal space, which was a semi-polite challenge that could be just as easily pretended to not be. Posturing, but with a possible excuse in that it was just to greet someone instead. Convoluted. Though it did make Wade think the Nathir had something like hands and arms given the context.

Slaves subverted this by doing a pat followed by an affectionate squeeze on the other hand, or clasped forearms and then squeezed. It was seen as a sign of trust, since either side could yank the person. That meant they were mutually showing each other respect. Handshakes with fingers and palms were pure human culture, and Eri was particularly happy about it.

"That's... your grip is really bony, man. Like, really bony. You should probably eat more." Jason said, shaking the strange man's hand.

"Wait… is your hand a prop?" Wade bit back a laugh, and Eri simply stepped backwards, tugging his glove so that it was back to being flush to his hand. The handshake had loosened it up, considering his fingers hardly had any mass to keep it in place.

"Oh, should mention but he doesn't talk." Wade said.

"Mute?"

"Er, in a manner of speaking." Wade said, then paused.

"Pun intended." Jason rolled his eyes, then turned to Eri.

"Well, the whole Rorschach getup is giving off serious 'I collect knives recreationally' energy, so tell me his sales pitch isn't about sharpening and selling them. That's what we call a pyramid scheme, Wade." Eri straightened his fedora with what Wade could only describe as offended dignity. Knives were excellent weapons, and if he could collect them he would. He didn't know what a pyramid scheme was, but the blessing he had was whispering some odd context clues.

Eri's head suddenly stopped in his tracks, and then slowly turned to stare at Wade.

"No, we're not going to start collecting knives, he's just doing a bit." Wade said, then turned to Jason.

"Quit giving him ideas."

"I'm not doing a bit about the schemes out here, the knife one always comes back every summer." Jason held his hands out in surrender, "I'll hear him out for whatever this thing is, he convinced you somehow to quit hobby froggies, so he's earned some goodwill from me. That place was sucking your soul dry man." Eri on his part had started to go explore the kitchen further off in the room, and specifically had started looking at the collection of knives held on a magnetic strip.

He really did take the 'make yourself at home' literally, which made Jason clearly nervous. That's not how guests acted. Catherine had a few hobbies, and cooking was one of them. So her knives were quite well cared for.

"Right," Wade said, then coughed in his hand.

"Let me get right to the point: Notice how I don't have glasses anymore? That's because I have 20/20 vision again. I can heal things now. The procedure was real fast, out of a hospital, no fees or anything. It's amazing."

"And… how exactly does this healing work?" Jason asked, probably getting the wrong idea and debating how to slowly peel Wade away from his delusions here. His voice dropped low, trying to keep it from the weird costumed man scavenging around in his kitchen near dangerous weapons.

"If you say something about crystals, I swear to god. This is the most sketch thing you've ever done Wade, should I have the cops on speed dial in case he turns dangerous?" Eri opened the drawers, and took out a fork, examining it in the light. It did not make him look any less suspicious. Wade pulled out his healing ring and held it out.

"This might look like any other ring, but it's a ring of healing. A genuine ring of healing." He put it down proudly on the desk. Jason looked down at the tiny thing. A look of complete ' are you goddamn kidding me' flashed through before he schooled it back down.

"Look," he said, keeping his voice still low.

"I don't know what pyramid scheme or crypto bullshit this guy's sold you on, but Wade, there's better ways out of your situation."

"This is different."

"That's what everyone says before they lose their life savings to some jackass in a costume. Is he charging you for the ring and 'training'? Asking for an initial investment?"

"He's not asking for money," Wade interrupted with a waving hand.

"Actually, I'm about to make more money than I've ever seen. I'll explain everything."

"Wade, that's literally what every mark says. Whatever he's promising you, it's not real. These people prey on desperate situations-""I can prove it." Wade stood straight, coughed in his hands and pointed a finger at Jason.

"In fact, I'll do better. You... get a blessing." Then mimed a silent 'pew' before lifting his finger back up and blowing off imaginary smoke. Eri politely clapped in the background, then returned to his scavenger hunt for the weird human cultural items. He'd seen a lot of these same things in Wade's apartment, but he was also finding things that Wade didn't have at all. Every kitchen was their own microcosm after all. It was going to be a disaster when he found the spice rack. Jason stared back in the meantime.

"Uh, not sure I follow."

"Guess we'll find out if you do or don't." Wade said, in elvish, confident.

"Well I still don't," Jason answered back. In elvish. He frowned not even a half second later.

"Wait, what? What? What the hell?"

"That's what I'm here to show you. I got magic. Actual magic. I'm a magic man Jason." He wiggled his fingers at that.

"Wade, did you spike my coffee or something? How? When?"

"Peh," He waved his hand dismissively at that.

"You know the only drug I'll pay anything for is painkillers and caffeine." He'd swapped to Nathir, his voice suddenly rough with the deep timber and throat sounds. The language had the word for 'painkiller', although it was more linked to the word weakness and cowardice - because of course it would be - but Nathir didn't have a word for 'caffeine', so Wade actually said that word in english midway through the sentence.

It went from growling and throat chanting out a tonal message, then saying a high pitched english 'caffeine' out of nowhere. The differences impossible to ignore.

"Picture french. Or Spanish. Or German. Or Nathir, which is what I'm talking to you in right this moment. Go on, give it a try. Spin up youtube and look up a few things." Wade pulled one of the side chairs, and sat down, tapping on the desk with a happy finger.

"I'll wait." Eri clicked his jaw in the background, giving a quick check the other two were doing fine despite the Nathir sounding out, then figured everything was still safe and so continued his exploration and pilfering of Catherine's kitchen, this time opening the bottom drawers to pull out a pan. He was clearly laughing to himself about something when he saw that. Jason stared back at Wade on the other hand, completely sucked into the moment.

He turned to his PC, minimized all his stock option sheets and tracking, then opened up youtube. Over the next five minutes, he went through just about everything he could find, including indian, arabic, and chinese videos. Even a few K-pop music videos he'd been a fan of already, just to see if Korean was part of that package too. To have a baseline that he already knew and was familiar with.

When he realized he could understand every lyric of his choice songs in a way he hadn't ever been able to before, it really started to sink in. All the while, Wade explained his run in with Market and how he'd actually gotten this blessing.

"So, at night you got sucked into this alternate world with these… blessings?"

"Just Market's blessing wise. Everything else is called a Boon, and it's... uh, different. Right now, I can dodge roll just about anything, and when my feet get wet, I get real dangerous. Tomorrow might be different, it's random." Jason turned to Eri, who was still in the back of the room, tapping on the pots and pans to test what kind of metal was being used.

"And… this is Market I'm guessing?" He asked, pointing over to the skeleton.

"In disguise? The god that gave you all this?"

"No, he's my summoned skeletal minion." Jason stared.

"Wade."

"Jason."

"Waaade…."

"Jason?"

"Goddamnit Wade, I seriously can't tell if you're pulling my chain here or if that's actually a skeleton. His hands were bony a hell, but that had to be a prop. Right?" Wade just smiled, then tapped his chest.

"Magic man, remember?" He turned to Eri.

"I think you're good to take the hat and mask off, door's closed and the blinds are down." Eri nodded, taking off the hat, then peeled off the mask. And finished by carefully putting the hat back on. The hat stays on, of course. After that, he flashed the completely gobstruck Jason a pair of finger guns. His current favorite human expression.

"Holy fuck." Jason breathed out, as Eri took off his glove to reveal the bone white hand and wiggle them.

"Yeah, you can say that again. Plus, he's ridiculously strong. Several times my level." Wade pulled out his satchel, and lifted out a glowing glass vial. It was still mostly full, and ready for use. He wasn't looking forward to having another session with the taste, but his mana bar showed 12/125, which meant he had a lot of juice ready to squeeze. Jason stared at that. And then slowly looked down at the healing ring Wade had put on the table. And then down at his limp legs, unmoving in his wheelchair. Wade smiled.

"It's time to get you back on your feet again."