In a sphere of a demon lord's influence

Chapter 10: In a sphere of a demon lord's influence

Five days passed after Bryce's talk with Sharla.

[Bryce E. Lars Lv. 7: HP: 2000/2000 MP: 2000/2000]

[Skills Available: The Swordsmanship of the Unknown Hero(S), The Heroic Companion(S), the survival skills of the unknown hero(A), A common appraisal skill(C), Excalibur(???), Sword of Dracula(???)]

There's a contest of bloodlines within Bryce as his health and mana points increase the same, and only he can actually change that by adding points either to vitality or mana stat, but as those remain equal, Bryce's goal is clearly different.

For now, he poured more stats into strength, stamina, and intelligence.

He felt like going for such a hybrid route was fine for him because of two different kinds of bloodlines within him. Recalling the image of his mother, Bryce inferred she was a mage, so [INT] increases his bloody veins' strength and sucking prowess, and his father surely must have been a swordsman owing to the Excalibur on his hip, so increasing strength to assist his swordsmanship was a good choice.

Stamina works well for both, mana needs a good body to move well through veins and outside, right?

His level didn't go up at all in the span of five days, though. So what did Bryce and Gengo exactly have done in nearly a week? For the heroic companion, it was mostly lying on the sofa after training with his owner. On the other hand, Bryce slowly absorbed common knowledge of the world, such as the villages' standards, currency, factions, kingdoms and different gods connected to them, beasts, and demon lords.

In all spheres of life, people were mainly stranded, and rulers of the top hierarchy used weaker communities as punishment, so they never bothered to fix their poor situations. For example, Bryce had already seen a few old ladies complaining on the street about low-quality goods and hunters guarding the village, comparing all of them to standards from the city she used to live in before.

She was here because her son had committed a crime, and a whole family was punished for it.

When Bryce heard that from one of his new friends, he sneered at the older lady and found her 'worries' about the security laughable. But when she mistook his sneer as some kind of invitation, Bryce shivered from disgust and called Sharla for help to deal with that old baba.

"You were a lifesaver again, Sharla."

"Your amnesia card came in handy, I think you shouldn't have called me, though. If you steered her into a nice conversation, you would have been able to get some goods from her. As someone empty-handed, you should grasp every occasion."

"I'm not interested in grasping that kind of opportunity." Bryce cast her an irritated glance, to which Sharla just grinned, already familiar with his reactions.

"It shows how valuable you are and how everyone wants to be in your hands!"

"Such shallow thinking. Everyone might want to be in my hands, but do I want everyone?"

"You at least could have kept smiling at her and get nice goods and irk her son, too." At the end of her sentence, Sharla curtly displayed her displeasure with a certain boy her age.

Bryce ignored her petty remark, but her words rang in his head. He couldn't help but feel odd at the thought of leveraging his smile and handsome looks to get whatever he wanted. That was actually pretty popular back on Earth, but it was mainly girls doing that on social media or streaming services.

Men, except those from singing boy bands, really had it hard to do so, and here was a pretty reliable source telling him he could achieve whatever he wanted with his smile in the village.

"I'd rather use my sword and skills I've honed for years to get my hands on what I desire," Bryce recalled his spar with a few villagers his age two days ago, he used the unknown hero's swordsmanship, mixed it with what he had learned on Earth, and started forming his own style without anyone influencing him.

It had been a good lesson to measure his talent and the strength of his gifts.

"Remember that you have two swords, Bryce, choose wisely." Sharla covered her lips with her little hands, trembling as she grinned, her eyes staying on Bryce's horrified face.

Does she know I wield two kinds of the sword? Bryce thought, then calmed down as Sharla's lips barely contained her laughter within her little mouth. Soon, she would burst out with so much laughter people would question her personality.

"Two swords, huh…" Bryce licked his lips, nodded a few times, then promptly extended his hand to grasp Sharla's hair! With a bundle of brown streaks in his palm, he clenched tightly and smiled threateningly. Meantime, Sharla parted her lips, faint cries escaped her, and she lifted her hands to pull away Bryce's stronger arm, to no avail.

These two became much closer, being like close friends, and Sharla revealed more acts appropriate for her age, she was even bold enough to joke about Bryce's heroic aura. With a few more villagers their age, Bryce and Sharla started some training: they ran across streets every morning, Bryce practiced swordsmanship with other boys who didn't want to become archers, then spent the afternoon learning the world.

It was all training. Gengo naturally participated, too.

"Let our healer go!" Mr. Arnold returned to the village, saw the healer and the foreigner acting lovely dovey in the middle of the village, then screamed indignantly at Bryce.

Of course, Bryce could see the misunderstanding in the tank's eyes, and knowing that it was unusual for a male and female to have a friendly relationship in such a dangerous world, he didn't bother fixing the man's mistake, and he just waited for him to come closer together with his buddies.

Bryce also saw a wounded man supported by two archers, so he pushed aside trivial matters and followed Sharla.

"How could a troll pierce through his shoulder so deeply?!" Sharla spoke innocently in an overly worried tone, her hands shining with the same pale light, her healing skill slowly stretching itself across the wounded.

The tank's face turned ugly, and Bryce, who saw it, sent thumbs up to Sharla, he knew she was not innocent at all, and her words rarely missed, then both of them listened to Mr. Arnold's lame excuses.

He then cast an angry glare at Bryce and said, "You should let him go, Mrs. Sharla. I heard only skilled healers can look into others' heads and fix amnesia by forcefully prickling memories stored in the brain. It's been five days, and you haven't progressed at all, so it only would do you better if you went with us to hunt the trolls."

Bryce's eye twitched.

It took some of his willpower to hold back from this particular guy who seemed offended by his presence. And even if the tank openly complained about Bryce to relieve some of his stress, Bryce wasn't that nice to allow him to do that.

But for the sake of his future, he kept his lips shut and inwardly prayed for a troll to overcome the tank's defenses, and hurt him severely just so Sharla would be able to slowly mend his wounds, so slowly he would scream for at least half a day.

And it wasn't like Bryce was in the village to train with others, it was good to learn standards and stuff, but he surely would've learned it elsewhere on his way to the Freedom Metropolis. Sharla wasn't the reason, either.

This village was in the domain of a demon lord: that was the reason Bryce still lived here after gathering enough intel.