Chapter 248 - Covering The Bases (4)

After using his skills whenever possible for almost ten days, Luke realized that such training was too much impractical. Most of his skills and spells barely leveled up a single time. While that was something that many others wanted and were jealous of, Luke wanted more. So, he decided to try something else.

"You want me to heal Pilaswine while you attack her?" Shalia frowned. "Why would you torture an monster loyal to you?"

"It is not torture, I just want to make my training more efficienty," Luke replied. "Besides, it will make her more resistant as well."

Luke had a point, but Rina felt that he was going too far with his training. He couldn't ask Richter since he was resting. Unfortunately, he was the only one who had enough physical defense to endure more than a few of Luke's attacks. Their group was quite unbalanced… they had three pure mages, which were Shalia, Sylah, and Danielle, one support which was Rina, two archers, which were Amanda and Celia, and Rachel, who had physical and magical skills. Luke didn't even count Luthi as part of the group since he disliked him and his attitude. Nevertheless, their frontline was seriously lacking in numbers… 

Speaking of Pilaswine, she already had two big kids. Since that species was massive, they needed more time to give birth… Nevertheless, after thinking for a while, Rina asked Shalia to make some ice stones, and they would throw those at Luke. It was better than letting him attack one of his loyal monsters, even though they had tried to eat him in the past. Besides, it was probably good simulation training against mages.

At that point in time, Rina's buffs were as crazy as they could be. They reached level ten, and she was saving coins to increase their ranks. So, when she threw one of the ice stones, Luke felt some weight behind them. To the point where he lost fifty points of health. However, when he used Fury Punches, he completely destroyed the stone without suffering any damage. He never tried to do that before, but he could make that skill land on the same spot in a quick sequence. What was weird was the fact that he managed to hit an object so many times, an object flying that fast… it left Rina with her mouth hanging open.

"Her strength isn't high to begin with, so she can only do so much," Shalia said. "Give her your bow and try to repel the arrow."

That was rather dangerous, but Luke decided to do that. Just to be safe, Rina decided to attack from two hundred meters away and without buffing her INT. After much hesitation, Rina finally shot one arrow. Still, she missed, and her arm began to tremble even more when the arrow opened a crater behind Luke if she hit his head with that…

"Maybe the idea of punching Pilaswine isn't so bad," Rina said. 

"Now, I am the one interested in this, go on, shoot," Luke said. "If I think that I won't be able to see where the arrow will land, I will protect my head with my arms. Just don't hit my balls. Even if you can regenerate them… it will traumatize me."

"Not to mention, she will have to touch the remains to heal it," Shalia said.

Those words only complicated things even more. Nevertheless, Rina took several deep breaths and aimed at Luke's armor. It probably could take a few hits of those, so Luke won't die if she aims properly. The first shot hit his right chest… or she had planned to hit, anyway. Luke blocked the arrow with both of his arms, but the impact pushed him ten meters backward.

"Ouch… ouch," Luke said while he was seeing some smoke leaving his bracers. "Even though they absorbed the impact, I still suffered quite a lot of damage."

"Are you okay? I am going to stop this," Rina said.

"No need, keep shooting, I want to get used to the speed of this type of attack," Luke said. "Once I do that, I will try to attack the arrow."

That was probably impossible. Even if it was possible, Luke would need to concentrate a lot of power in a single punch to do so. In any case, until the time they judged that Richter was fine to fight again, Luke didn't manage to punch to arrows. He only managed to read their direction slightly and so moved his arms to block them. After doing some tests, Rina confirmed that those arrows could move at almost five kilometers per second… it was Mach 15 speed, so she managed to convince him that blocking six out ten arrows was already good enough. 

"I will only be satisfied once I can dodge things like the meteors that snake woman used, they were at least three times faster than the arrows," Luke said.

"It amazes me that you want to compare meteorites with arrows," Rina furrowed her eyebrows.

After a while, the group reunited in front of the hideout. Luke gave the order to the archers to stay on guard and fight the enemies if they were to be attacked without leaving the mountain. Even if an overlord appears, they shouldn't be able to destroy the whole place instantly.

"While you decided that we were going to attack one of the enemies, you never said which," Amanda said. "Come to think of it, you never asked about the armies of the enemies either."

"Once I learned that they keep moving, I understood that selecting a target wouldn't work," Luke explained. "We will have to attack the first enemy that we find, even if it ends up being the most troublesome one."

It was a gamble that they couldn't avoid it. Otherwise, they would waste too much time waiting for a better chance and easier opponent.. They could be discovered during that time of waiting, and the whole plan would blow.