CH 131

*** Coming Into Focus, The New Continent ***

Lancelot lifted his long spear. With a deep breath in, he thrust the spear forward in a straight line.

Crack!

The steel spear became embedded in a stone pillar. Lancelot pried it out, leaving a small hole in the stone.

Crack.

Particles of stone powder that had fallen to the floor rose into the air, as the stone pillar began to restore itself. The hole was quite small, it did not take very long for it to fully mend. Then, once again…

Crack!

The spear penetrated the pillar once more. When Lancelot removed the spear, the stone pillar again returned to its original form. Again, and again, and again…

Zing!

Behind Lancelot, a blue circle emerged and spun around. It was a monster-summoning magic circle.

Boom!

A lightning-quick stab collided with the Iron Golem, which had just spawned out of the magic circle. The Iron Golem didn’t give in easily though, as it parried Lancelot’s stab.

In any other game, it would have taken some time for a regen monster to properly recognize a user, but the monsters in DIO didn’t follow such logic; they attacked a user the moment they appeared. Even if a user waited at a regen point, they wouldn’t garner any combat advantage. In addition, if a user installed a trap or something in a regen location, the regen monster would reappear in a different location.

Whoosh! Bam!

Without conceding any ground, Lancelot pulled his spear back and thrust out with another lightning-quick stab. It was a completely different power from the stabs that had punctured the stone pillar. The stone pillar had been punctured purely through his technique, but his current stab attack was a well-trained, aura-imbued attack.

Bam!

The Iron Golem, who was trying to lunge at Lancelot with its heavy body, lost its balance and stumbled. Though Lancelot’s attack was simple, its speed was unusual, and the force behind it was tremendous. The moment the Iron Golem stumbled…!

Bam!

Lancelot’s fourth stab penetrated the Iron Golem’s abdomen, the location of its magic stone.

Thud!

Fatally wounded, the Iron Golem collapsed and scattered into dust. It left behind two items, a steel bar and [Rochefort’s Heart].

“Phew… phew… each strike contained my full power, but I still needed four strikes…”

Lancelot picked up Rochefort’s Heart and attached it to the stone pillar. When he first faced off against the Iron Golem, it had taken him three hours to defeat it. Considering that it only took him four strikes this time around, Lancelot had made incredible progress. However, he didn’t see it this way. If he had accomplished this feat sheerly through an increase in skill, then he’d feel satisfied, but his levels and stats had steadily increased throughout the process. Moreover, considering that he’d been at this for over a hundred days, he felt that his progress was too slow.

Woong!

Right then, the stone pillar with Rochefort’s Heart attached to it made a deep rumbling sound. Soon, a blue sphere appeared in front of it. It was a magic stone. Lancelot was currently working on a repetitive-type (grinding) quest; whenever he attached Rochefort’s Heart, a quest item, to the pillar, a magic stone would appear. Usually, a low-rank magic stone appeared, but this time around, it was a mid-rank.

“It’s already lunchtime.”

Lancelot opened his inventory, took out a hamburger, chewed on it, then looked at the time. It was time for him to move on to the next area.

“Argh! Die!!”

Swish!

“Stinky human!!”

Swish!

“Ugh! I’ll kill you…!”

Swish!

Orcs were low-level monsters that every user knew about. In the world of DIO, no one could say with a straight face that orcs were strong opponents in combat. However, this was because users and other monsters were stronger, not because orcs were inherently weak.

The orc species level was Level 3. Basically, orcs possessed nearly three times the strength and stamina of the average adult man; they could make easy work of highly trained humans (Level 2) just by developing into adults. Moreover, standing at 1.7 meters tall, orcs were fearlessly brave and combative. Possessing a natural instinct for combat, orcs could easily handle ordinary humans in a one-on-one fight. Put simply, they were predators, like tigers, lions, or polar bears (Level 3) in the real world.

“Wow! Look at that. That’s no joke.”

“Huh? What do you mean it’s not a joke? He’s just catching orcs… they’re one of the easiest monster species. I mean, the leader seems to be an orc warrior, but even that’s only Level 5 at best.”

“You’re right. His moves do look very neat and graceful though.”

Orcs were powerful, but it was also true that if one’s level exceeded 5, one wouldn’t face any trouble contending against an orc. At Level 6, users could exterminate an entire orc village just by employing a hit-and-run strategy.

Although the orc was a beast like a lion or a tiger, a Level 5 user could pry open a tightly closed crocodile’s mouth with their bare hands, and could even lift an elephant, depending on the type of abilities they had. Even the strongest carnivorous dinosaur, the Tyrannosaurus, was only Level 6, which meant that users with similar levels had equivalent combat power. Armed with perfected martial art and magic power techniques, users, who fought countless battles every day, were also monsters, capable of wielding modern weapons.

“Hmm. Look closely though. Don’t you see something different?”

“The way he’s catching one orc at a time? I can do that easily.”

Three users, who were resting in the shade of a nearby tree after a hunt, watched Lancelot fight a group of orcs in the distance. Lancelot was stepping back and poking repeatedly. Fierce, angry orcs rushed in, but Lancelot killed them one at a time with minimal movement.

“That’s not it, you idiot. How long can you guys fight without a break?”

“Thirty minutes? No, probably forty minutes max.”

“Ha, newbie. I can fight for an hour.”

Though he answered with confidence, the user was obviously bluffing. In truth, it wasn’t easy to fight for long periods of time, unless it was just play-fighting with an overwhelmingly weak enemy. If one could fight for about ten minutes, one would usually have to rest for more than ten. The need for rest wasn’t just a matter of stamina or magic power; it was because one’s mind would inevitably get tired.

“Well, an hour is an overstatement, but if someone could keep up a fight for around that long, it would be a tremendous feat. If you could fight for an hour, you’d be a bona fide grinder.”

Combat consumed a lot of mental energy. Enemies always rushed to kill their target. Naturally, when a fight began, a user would have to avoid and counter it. It goes without saying that a considerable amount of concentration was needed in this type of scenario. Battles in DIO required this sort of effort because attacks didn’t just happen with a click of the mouse. Even in a strategy simulation game, as long as one fought fiercely, one’s hands and knees would tremble from the effort, so it wasn’t easy to keep up a focus-driven battle.

“Well, here’s a question then. Guess how long he’s been fighting?”

“Like two hours?”

“No, it’s been five hours. He hasn’t taken a single rest.”

“What? Really?”

While the three users talked amongst themselves, the last orc fell. However, it was no use. Lancelot was fighting against fifty orcs. He was dealing with them individually, and he wasn’t finishing them off with overwhelming technique and speed, as he was observing gaps in their defense and striking out with his spear at critical moments. By the time he finished off the fiftieth orc, the first orc he killed had already regened. Unless someone intervened, Lancelot would be in this battle infinitely.

“Die, bastard…!!”

Plop!

“Human…!!”

Plop!

“Die…!”

Plop!

Emotionlessly, Lancelot pulled in and extended his spear, again and again. He’d penetrate one of the orcs’ hearts before retrieving his spear to launch another attack. The orcs that were stabbed in the heart would try to grab onto his spear, but their hands would bounce off due to the aura Lancelot had infused into it. The same was true of the orcs attacking from Lancelot’s side and back. Since a subtle aura was wrapped around Lancelot’s entire body, all the orcs’ attacks bounced off.

“Since he’s not collapsing from exhaustion, he must be a relatively high-level user. Possibly Level 5? No, Level 6? He seems like a martial arts or aura user.”

“Oh, that one martial arts technique… what do you call it… ah, Masochist Divine Arts, which has a low max capacity of internal energy but has an insane regen multiple.”

There were innumerable martial art techniques in DIO, but the one with the greatest regen capability was known as Masochist Divine Arts. As one of the unpopular divine arts, it wasn’t a martial art that one could obtain alone, as it required a rather abnormal form of training.

A Masochist Divine Arts practitioner needed to develop their internal energy for the first twenty to thirty years. The target internal energy capacity was one or two cycles of internal energy, and of course, the more internal energy a practitioner targeted, the longer they would train for. Once they obtained the target internal energy capacity, that practitioner would hand over their internal energy to another. In other words, the practitioner would, in an instant, revert to a normal person.

Once they were reverted to a normal person, the Masochist Divine Arts began. The user, with no more internal energy, would train once more to accumulate internal energy. However, since they didn’t lose internal energy from injury or attack, the practitioner would be able to regain internal energy at a faster pace than before. Once they reached their internal energy target number, they would once again give their internal energy to someone else. This process would repeat, over, and over, allowing the user to regain internal energy at a faster rate than the previous cycle. At a certain point, the user would be able to regain the amount of internal energy that they had given away almost instantly.

“Hmm. Your explanation is somewhat correct, but it’s not applicable to this situation. Though Masochist Martial Arts offers a fast regen speed, it doesn’t offer a large internal energy capacity for the practitioner, so you wouldn’t be able to maintain a constant aura around your body. That guy seems to be using aura, not internal energy… eh, I don’t know. It’s not like aura power has different schools of thought.”

The training method of aura users was universal. This wasn’t because all aura users used the same power but because each person used a completely different power.

“Well, it’s none of my business. To be honest, Level 6 is relatively high, but seeing as how he’s hunting in a place like this, he must not be confident in his control.”

“He could be grinding out EXP. I think I’ve heard that it’s more efficient to catch many lower-level monsters than a few higher-level ones.”

They watched Lancelot’s battle for a bit longer, but they soon lost interest. Lancelot’s fighting style was novel, but very simple.

Plop!

“Argh!”

Lancelot was employing simple stabs. He wasn’t using any other form of attack, just a quick frontal stab. If he were to use such a stab attack against a similar leveled user, his straight-line stab would easily be parried and countered. He could only defeat orcs because their level of physical ability and spiritual power was overwhelmingly lower than his own.

Plop.

Lancelot wasn’t hunting; he was training. Of course, he knew that this kind of training was unconventional. Could one truly develop from training just one movement? Since an enemy could block his stab and fight back, Lancelot should have also trained his defense and avoidance skills, in order to develop a strategy for dealing with an opponent that was faster than him.

‘It’s not that I don’t realize that fact, but…’

Lancelot couldn’t do it.

His wistfully dull development speed made his aura movement speed extremely slow. At the lower levels, he could fill these gaps through combat experience and training, but once he faced off against higher-level monsters, it became almost impossible for Lancelot to respond to their attacks. Once he focused his aura on an attack, his opponent’s counterattack would come in before the aura returned to his body. This was a fatal disadvantage for aura users who had to cycle aura quickly throughout their bodies to attack and defend.

‘Since that’s the case…’

Lancelot only trained in stabbing. He maintained a basic amount of aura around his body and focused his remaining aura power on his stab attacks. He had already reached Level 7. He was too high a level to be dealing with lowly orcs. But what else could he do? To get a sense of battle imprinted on his body, he had to fight for twenty-four hours, around the clock. He needed a monster that was so weak that it wouldn’t be able to break through the pitiful amount of aura Lancelot used to protect his body.

Plop!

This time, he used his spear to stab an orc around its neck. Everything was on repeat. His aura pattern moved to stab. Since he lacked the ability to control his aura at will, he was planning on instilling the aura movement pattern onto his body through rote memorization. In addition…

“I have to collect EXP.”

Lancelot mumbled unemotionally while striking with his spear. As another orc fell, another stab thrust forward, again and again.