Swan
Impact Dispersion — a Guardian skill unlocked at Level 25.
It came with a stringent condition: one hundred pieces of equipment had to be destroyed while under active combat status.
Under the game's system, once durability hit zero, equipment was permanently damaged and discarded as scrap. The financial loss was substantial enough that most people repaired their gear or swapped it out long before that point. Guardians in particular relied on Barrier as an all-purpose resource for both offense and defense, so as equipment durability dropped, the efficiency of their bone-crushing techniques declined right along with it — losses mounting on both sides of the ledger.
In other words, it was a skill no one would ever discover through normal means.
You'd think it went undiscovered for ages. But this skill was found surprisingly easily — because other Blessings had skills acquired under similar conditions.
Hiss!
Crunch!
The skilled assistant I'd brought along to learn Impact Dispersion sank its teeth into my wrist. A tingling sensation spread from the bite, and I felt my arm growing sluggish. Before, a single bite would have started the petrification immediately, but my resistance must have climbed considerably — the process was remarkably slow.
I pulled out a rope and bound my arm tightly to the creature's body so it couldn't pull free.
Hiss! Hiss!
Still clamped onto my wrist, the bound creature thrashed about. True to its billing as a skilled assistant, its movements were full of life.
"All right. Please begin."
Beside me stood the unskilled assistant, her expression completely devoid of emotion. Her name was Seraphina Voltein.
"Labor. Labor…"
Muttering it like a hypnotic mantra, she drew Astrape.
Crack!
The instant I registered a flash of light—
"Ghk!"
Electricity raced through my entire body in a split second, every muscle locking up as I went rigid.
"Hah…"
Seraphina let out a short breath, and the equipment I was wearing shattered, clattering across the floor. I confirmed the destruction, waited for the shock to wear off, then slipped on another piece of gear from the pile I'd laid out.
"Ninety-nine to go."
"Ninety-nine…"
Crack!
"Eighty-seven to go."
"Eighty-seven… eep?!"
Seraphina had been echoing my count when she suddenly sucked in a breath and froze. Where her gaze had locked, my older brother stood — back from a dungeon run that had started at dawn.
"Hard at it first thing in the morning, Edwin."
"Oh."
The dungeon known as the Abyss of the Parched Paradise was a place where Bloodbane really shone. He'd probably been enjoying the feeling of turning into a hack-and-slash protagonist in there.
Farming weak mobs is fun, I'll give him that.
I shrugged and looked back at Seraphina. I wanted to get right back to the grind, but the appearance of a new face had turned her to stone. She seemed to feel an enormous amount of pressure from having an audience.
"Three hundred gold coins."
She flinched. Seraphina hurriedly held up a finger as if telling me to keep quiet.
"Hm?"
When my brother's gaze shifted to her, she shook off her hesitation and let out a powerful battle cry.
"Haaaaaah!!!"
Crack!
The emotion behind it made the jolt a bit more intense, but my status ailment resistance had risen accordingly, so it was fine. I nodded with the neck that could still move freely.
"All right. Eighty-six to go."
"…Ugh."
"Another bizarre training regimen, I see. Electric shock resistance this time, Edwin?"
"More or less."
"Don't overdo it. Mental energy drain is no joke."
My brother's gaze fell on Astrape.
"Aren't you worried about me?"
"What am I supposed to do worrying about a guy who sets himself on fire?"
"Fair enough."
Electric shock was unpleasant, sure, but nowhere near as painful as spontaneous combustion. It was a somewhat disagreeable sensation, but perfectly bearable.
"Uh, uh, huh?"
Unable to follow the brothers' conversation, Seraphina's eyes darted left and right.
"If you're done resting, let's continue. Eighty-five remaining."
"…"
"Eighty-five!"
"…Eighty-five."
How much time passed after that? She swung her sword until her mental energy hit its limit, destroying equipment, then took rest breaks to recover. In the meantime, I cleared the shattered gear to one side and pulled fresh equipment from my pack, arranging it for easy donning. Once her mental energy recovered, the equipment-smashing cycle resumed — four rounds in total.
"Almost there. Twenty-two to go."
"…"
They say humans are creatures of adaptation. At first she'd swung her sword with the kind of expression that suggested she was about to snarl Just kill me already…!, but past the fifty-mark her face had settled into that of a factory worker clocking in for a shift. She swung her blade with a vacant, emotionless face. As if reflecting her emotional state, her sword path grew as precise as a machine's. The unnecessary tension that had once locked her shoulders when destroying gear melted away, and she demolished equipment with optimal efficiency. Comparing the time per cycle, she felt roughly twice as fast as when we'd started.
Perfect.
Being bitten by the Gorgon kept me under combat status. While destroying equipment, I was simultaneously raising my resistance to electric shock status ailments. On top of that, Seraphina was filling the acquisition conditions for Armor Break by repeatedly destroying gear. One grind session, two skills and one proficiency gain. A true three-birds-with-one-stone situation. And all for a mere ten gold coins! There could be no more perfect proficiency grind than this.
"This isn't what a knight does…"
So please stop muttering with that look of a person whose dreams and hopes have all died.
"All right, last stretch! Ten to go!"
Seraphina swung her sword once more. Where initially she'd needed multiple swings to damage the gear, this time she delivered only a single light strike.
Clink-clatter!
Yet that alone cleanly sliced through the chainmail, shattering the interlocked rings and scattering them.
Whoosh.
At the same time, a radiance all too familiar poured from the back of Seraphina's hand.
"…Huh?"
Light returned to the pupils of Seraphina, who had been swinging her sword as mindlessly as a factory component.
"W-why…?"
Seraphina raised the back of her hand toward the sky in disbelief. I glanced at her, then casually started putting on more gear.
"All right, we're almost done for real! Nine to go!"
"No, wait, what on earth is this—"
"Nine to go!"
"I just acquired a skill! A skill! A skill!!!"
"What?"
My brother, who'd been training alone with Bloodbane to adapt to his new weapon, looked over at the word "skill."
"Nine to go!"
"I said I learned a skill!!!"
Whether the worker questions things, shouts, or throws a tantrum, the factory never stops running. I still hadn't acquired my skill.
"Nine to go."
Seraphina stared at me with an incomprehensible expression, then swung her sword as if testing her newly acquired skill. Once again, a single stroke shattered the equipment.
So she did learn Armor Break.
A skill useful against armored enemies, with the effect of rapidly reducing equipment durability. It was also useful against monsters with thick hides, making it a solid skill for Knights who struggled to use mounted combat skills in dungeons.
I figured she hadn't learned it yet.
When we'd dueled in the tournament finals, just watching her sword path had given me a rough estimate. Even if she had known it, the outcome probably wouldn't have changed — but if she'd already had Armor Break, at least my pauldrons would have come off. Since the arms needed a certain range of motion, the pauldron sections were relatively thin.
All right. Time to wrap this up…
"Haaah…"
Seraphina collapsed onto a blanket, drained of mental energy. Wait for mental energy to recover, then drain it to the bottom again. Easy to say, but it caused massive migraines — grueling enough that even full-grown adults would whimper. Having completely exhausted her mental energy five times over, collapsing like that was only natural.
I handed Seraphina some water, then looked at the back of my own hand.
I could feel it. The principles and usage of Impact Dispersion etched themselves into my mind. I clenched and unclenched my fist with satisfaction, nodding.
"Edwin. Is the skill Seraphina learned one that only Knights can acquire?"
"You know your stuff."
"Tsk."
Knights and Warriors were both close-range DPS classes, so they often learned overlapping skills. But Armor Break was exclusive to Knights. My brother clicked his tongue in mild disappointment and stepped back.
"Still, you should report this to Father yourself later. It's a secret technique rediscovered after a long time — he'll be thrilled."
"Probably."
"What about the skill you learned? Doesn't seem like it was just about adapting to electric shock… Something Barrier-related?"
"You're getting good at reading me."
"So it really was just that humans failed to understand the gods' will… There's a saying that every Blessing holds its own underlying principle. For Guardians, the core is Barrier."
Guardians were difficult to raise, and the conditions for acquiring their skills were bizarre. But unlike other Blessings with diverse builds, Guardians were fundamentally a simple Blessing that revolved around Barrier — because the Guardian Blessing was said to derive from a single god.
"Wait, wait a moment…"
So exhausted she'd lost her knightly spirit and reverted to a young lady's speech patterns, Seraphina lifted her head.
"I, um, learned a skill… Please explain it to me…"
Even while trembling, she was desperately trying to get information about the skill. This was someone who'd hit Level 34 in a mere year and two months, honing her techniques to a remarkable degree of precision. In a way, this attitude was only natural.
"Don't you have some sense of it already?"
The moment you acquire a skill, you automatically learn its principles and usage. She'd learned it while destroying armor, so she should have some grasp of the principle.
"I've destroyed plenty of armor during training before. Why would a skill like this appear only now…?"
On this one, the conditions are similar to a Guardian's.
The acquisition condition for Armor Break was destroying an opponent's equipment more than one hundred times while under combat status.
It's a skill Knights usually pick up after going through territorial wars.
Even among those who'd acquired the skill, few would know the exact conditions. Even the veteran soldiers who'd retired alongside my grandfather left records saying they'd simply returned from the battlefield and found they'd acquired it.
"Um, so… Lord Edwin…"
Something about this felt like déjà vu.
"What is it, Miss Seraphina?"
"I've heard it said that a swan paddles constantly beneath the water in order to float elegantly on the surface."
"Yes, I've heard that saying."
Though it's a myth.
"Honor without strength is the empty talk of the powerless weak, and strength without honor is nothing more than the violence of bandits."
Ah. I could roughly see where this was going.
"I've come to realize that you, my lord, are the same. For the sake of the honor you hold in your heart, you must have been paddling constantly beneath the surface."
Wouldn't she do well if I just put her on a stage as is? That thought crossed my mind as her somewhat excessive gestures and hand motions accompanied a full-blown speech.
"And the way you don't hesitate to show your own unsightly side in order to enlighten this powerless weakling is the very essence of chival—"
"So how much?"
"W-well, for a hundred gold coins…"
"Sss."
"Two hundred…"
"Haaah…"
"Three hundred! Could you please tell me for three hundred gold coins, please…?"
"Hmm, in cash?"
"…In labor, if you would."
She really was someone you just couldn't dislike.