Chapter 13: 11 – V grade battle art

August 16^th, year 787 of the Imperial calendar

The freezing forest, home to various monsters, dungeons, and the location of a V grade battle art.

The battle art, which was tailor-made for people with space affinity, lies in a cave right beneath the only cliff on the south-western part of the forest, near Feler city but not near enough to be discovered even after all these years.

A criminal, chased by the guards of the city for thievery, unknowingly ran towards the direction of the battle art. Thinking that dying was much better than rotting in a jail cell for god knows how many years, he decided to jump off the cliff. However, fate had different things in stores for him.

As he was closing his eyes, waiting for the sweet embrace of death, he landed on solid ground. Not on the frozen soil deep below, but on a ledge sticking out of the underside of the cliff, connecting to a peculiar cave. Rejoiced, he ran into the cave, thanking the gods for giving him a second chance at life.

That's how it went in the novel.

You could guess the rest of the story. He ventured into the cave, found the V grade battle art and continued his life until he met the protagonist. One thing to note though was that he had to dig his way out of the cave since he could not climb back up the way he came down. Thus, I bought a long rope immediately after I accepted the request to collect Icen herbs at the adventurer guild.

Krista and I then headed towards the East gate of Feler city. Along the way, Krista kept salivating at the food stalls she passed by, wanting to try out new food she has never eaten before. However, since we were going to have to fight monsters really soon, I couldn't take the risk of her having a stomachache in a life-and-death situation. Thus, much to Krista's dismay, I dragged her to the gate.

The gate, which stood several meters tall, was devoid of people as it was still considered early in the morning.

"Halt! Show me your identifications" a guard said as we got close to the gate.

"Here." We handed him our Adventurer cards.

"Adventurer's eh? Can't believe kids my daughter's age are doing this kind of things"

"..."

"Alright, you can go. Just remember to go back before curfew, you wouldn't want to camp outside the city"

"Thanks for the advice" I said as we walked through the gate.

Since we were not using the main road, it only took us 30 minutes to get to the outskirt of the forest. I then started walking towards the cliffs, Krista following suit behind me. Along the way, we were met with Ice stags munching on Icen herbs. 

We tried to kill them as we have already picked up the request to get those herbs and Ice stags' antlers sold for a very good price. Furthermore, we could store stags meat as emergency rations.

It didn't go very well. Before we even got close to the stags, they noticed us and ran away. Those bastard even took all the herbs with them as they fled.

"Aw, they got away" Krista said.

"..."

"Uh, why are you making that face?"

Hearing that, I quickly swept the vicious smile off my face. What was I even getting mad for? Some herbs? Or that mere stags dared to make a fool out of me?

Seeing that my emotions was surging again, I quickly activated [F - Emotionless] and deactivated it as soon as I felt my angers dispersing into nothingness.

'Good' I thought as I calmed down. During the last 5 years, I've always relied on [F - Emotionless] to keep my emotions in check as Marcos' memories was still affecting my personality, albeit slightly. I would have liked to deal with this problem without using the skill but I couldn't afford to risk losing my rationality in this kind of place.

Despite that, I still decided to chase after the stags. After all, we needed to collect the herbs or else we would be a laughing stock for failing a G rank mission. Not that I care about others opinion but that we would lose our Adventurer cards if we failed 3 quests in a row as a new Bronze rank.

I put away my sword and took out a handgun from [Alternate storage]. With this, I could take them all out from a distance with [Railgun]. Krista tracked them down and quickly led the way. There they were, having their last meal on a small clearing in the forest, thick bushes lying just around 15 meters away from them.

I killed my presence as I was lying prone in a bush, observing the stags.

As soon as Krista gave me an 'Okay' signal, electricity surged at my location.

Bzzzzt—! BANG—! BANG—! BANG—!

Three silver bullets made their way towards the stags, splitting the air and leaving behind a pale white trail as they did so.

The stags, which were sensitive to sound, ran away as soon as they heard the crackling electricity. However, they were one step too late. One died instantly, while the other two was hit in the legs. However, they still managed to run away.

They ran the opposite direction of me, wanting to stay alive to see another day. Before they could celebrate getting away from certain death, however, their world turned upside-down as they slowly saw their own headless bodies collapsing right before them.

They had just ran head-first into Krista's string trap that she prepared beforehand. The mental wires, which were thin but sharp, decapitated them.

As my accuracy was not nearly as high as a competent sharpshooter, I had Krista set up some traps before I started blasting at the stags. Thankfully, it paid off. They would have gotten away if it wasn't for her traps.

"That's Mithril wires for you" Krista whistled as she disarmed her traps.

We gathered the corpses before cutting out their antlers. Then, it was time to deal with the bodies. As we turned to the headless corpses, we had a painful realization: Neither of us knew how to skin animals. Thus, we decided to just put them into my [Alternate storage] and get them to a butcher when we get back to the city.

Our first hunt in the forest went well, with Icen herbs collected and Ice stags antlers to boot.

---

***

As we continued making our way to the cliff, we were met more monsters. But they were quickly dealt with by either Krista's meticulously planted traps or a [Railgun] to the head. 

After 6 more hours of walking and hunting, we arrived at the south-western cliffs. 

'Found it!' I thought as I spotted a ledge. You could barely see it from above but luckily, I knew exactly what to look for.

"Krista, take this rope and pull me up when I call you"

"Huh, what are yo—" 

I didn't let her finish her sentence as I jumped down.

"NO!" She screamed.

"God! I'm fine. Don't be so loud"

"Why did you do that?"

"There's something here that I need to get, just pull me up when I call you"

"Fine!"

I walked further into the cave. Inside, there were no legendary altars, no Gargoyles guarding a gigantic gate, or anything grand at all. There was just a skeleton with loots sprawling on the floor near it. 

'This must be the space mage' I thought.

The loots were practically useless. I didn't want any of his rusty old equipment, I only needed the battle art.

"Nope, useless, useless... Ah, here it is!" 

I didn't take long to find the battle art manual. It looked like a bunch of papers that was hastily glued together. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that it was useless scrap just like the stuff I found before. 

Wasting no more time, I absorbed the manual. Just like with the skill, the manual turned all liquidly and was absorbed into my skin. It was still freaky no matter how many times I looked at it.

<Battle art acquired>

=====

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[V – World splitter]

A battle art created by an unknown master Space mage. It allows the user to create a lingering trail of spatial distortion that shreds anything unprotected by mana to pieces. As the art is entirely dependent on the concentration of spatial attribute mana, it must be used in tandem with other battle arts. Thus, it doesn’t have any named movements. Upon mastery, the practitioner won’t even need a second to concentrate the necessary amount of space mana to execute the art.

=====

The battle art essentially enhanced any other battle arts you use by leaving a trail of distorted space at the places that your weapon made contact with.

Not wanting to stay in this damp cave with the creepy skeleton, I quickly made my way towards the ledge.

"SISTER, PULL ME UP!"

"Alright!"

It was already mid afternoon when I got the sword art.

"So, what did you do down there?"

"You want to know? Alright, watch this" I said as I pulled out my long sword.

I got into a stance and stood there motionlessly, trying to concentrate spatial attribute mana on the blade.

"..."

"..."

"..."

SWOOOOSH—! Vuam—!

I did an upswing when I felt that I've concentrated enough space mana, distorting the space where I slashed. All of that took... a full minute. Just concentrating mana took up 59 seconds.

"You... swung your sword? Cool I guess?"

"Oh, that must be how it seems to you. Try picking up a rock and throw it at where I just slashed my sword"

She complied, bending over to pick up a fist-sized rock and threw it at me. Before even getting close to me, however, the rock disintegrated into nothingness. Krista then alternated her gaze between where the poor rock once was and my triumphant face, before taking a step back.

"Uh.. brother? You wouldn't used that on me just because I teased you, wouldn't you?"

"...?"

"..."

"Great idea!"

"NOO!" Krista screamed as I ran towards her with the sword in my hand.

---

***

After fooling around for a bit, we departed back towards Feler city.

Well, we weren't as lucky on our way back, as we encountered a pack of Ice boars. I pull out my handgun as I wasn't foolish enough to test out my new sword art that took a full minute to activate on F- ranked monsters of all thing.

Our strategy was the same as before, I shoot at them while Krista set up traps. But this time, Krista planted the traps right in front of us as Ice boars were quite aggressive, unlike the stags. 

As a result, I killed 2 from a distance while Krista's trap took care of the remaining 4. As we really didn't care enough to remove their tusks, we just threw their corpses into [Alternate storage] and deal with them later once we got to the city.

Thanks to that waste of time, dusk have already broke when we were a little over half-way to Feler city. Thus, we had to set up our camp in the forest, much to our dismay. Well, only to my dismay though as Krista was excited at the prospect of camping out in the woods since she have never done it before.

We made a campfire and took out some jerkies Krista bought beforehand.

"..."

"Sister, you didn't buy seasonings?"

"Sorry!"

As such, I had the blandest meal I've every had in the middle of a forest.

As time passes, however, we realized why the forest was named the 'Freezing forest'. It was, without a doubt, freezing. When we were moving around during the day, we never realized how cold the forest could be at night.

Krista snuzzled up against me for a bit of warmth and fell asleep pretty soon after so I had to be on night watch first.

2 hours passed, I was about to wake Krista up for her shift when I saw that she was still sleeping.

'Cute!' I thought, before deciding that maybe keeping watch all night wasn't that bad.

Well, I wish I didn't listen to my past self. It was that bad. Monsters somehow still found us even after we erased all our tracks and cleaned the blood off our clothes. Luckily, most of them were at G rank, so I could still deal with them alone.

Morning came, I woke Krista up and we continued walking towards the city.

It was right before noon when we got back to Feler city. Seeing us approaching the gate, the guard from yesterday widened his eyes in surprise.

"I thought you kids were dead when I didn't see you come back yesterday"

"Well, some bothersome monsters came up and we had to camp for the night" I scratched my head.

"That sounds awful! You must be dying to have a proper meal now. Just hand me your identification again and get into the city. Oh, you don't have to pay the toll since you're adventurers returning from a mission"

After saying goodbyes with the nice guard, we got to the guild to hand over the herbs and went straight to an inn to have a meal and sleep.

---

***

The next day, I tasked Krista with selling the stags' antlers and Ice boars. Thus, I transferred them over to Krista's [S - Shallows of the abyss].

As for me, well, I went to a patch of empty land to the north-east of the city to train with the [V - World splitter] battle art.

The sword art right now is basically worthless. I could not expect the enemy to wait a full minute for me to charge up my attack. Well, I could if the protagonist was my opponent. He was so nice that he even waited for his enemies to finish their speeches in the middle of a fight and whatnot.

To be honest, I sympathize with the villain that was supposed to learn this battle art. Because it was so damn hard to use. Not only must you concentrate spatial attribute mana at an inhumanly fast speed, you also have to do it discreetly or else your opponent will know that you're up to something. Furthermore, the mana cost is huge. While the mana consumed when activating the art is not that much, the amount of mana used up to maintain the distortion active is huge. I almost ran out of mana the other day when I showed Krista the art.

Well, but it was nothing some little tricks can't fix. Or so I thought. I couldn't think of any ways to speed up the process other than only focusing mana at the tip of the sword, which worked surprisingly well. Also, I found out that the spatial distortion started taking more mana out of me after 0.2 seconds of manifestation. Thus, I would only keep it activate for 0.2 seconds in the future.

After two months, I've managed to shorten the concentration time to just 25 seconds, which was a huge improvement. Now I can somewhat use it during a fight if I had Krista to cover for me. During those two months, I've also decided on what to do next. We would be going to Leiast city in the human dukedom.

I wanted to go to Leiast city since it was the closest city to the Kaiera mountain range, the location of a cheat I could get that wouldn't affect the plotline of the novel.

Thus, on the 10^th of October, we departed towards Leiast city on a merchant's caravan.

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