3. The Elemental Sword Art

Human Continent 'Astrum', The Capital City 'Astra'.

Inside the room of a Hotel near Rift Mountain, Year 4345

"Hoo...I got tired just from this much, I will have to do extreme training after I go back to the academy." 

In the end, Rio was successful in stealing the protagonist's most important and overpowered chance.

'Limitless talent...' 

The chance that Rio stole yesterday was the limitless talent, which means he will have no bottleneck in the future and his max rank potential will increase.

'Moreover, this talent provides me with the improvement speed of a genuine SSS rank talent, thus I can improve myself as fast as an SSS rank potential holder, like 'that' villain guy...' 

Unlike the protagonist, who got this chance by pure luck, he had to gamble his own life to obtain this insanely overpowered chance.

He had no idea if the rift would really be able to take him to the same place that Fade went to; if anything had gone wrong, he would have been dead by now.

'That rift must have had a 'set' location where its other end opens, which means that it was designed to be perfectly friendly for the protagonist...' 

'It's a good thing that I was able to take advantage of this loophole...' 

Rio glanced outside the window of his hotel room and noticed that it was already nighttime now.

'There's one more chance that I need to steal... although it's not as overpowered as this 'limitless' talent, it's still better than nothing...' 

'I will do it tomorrow.... I am too tired right now... sigh...' 

'As for checking the status, let's do it when I get that thing tomorrow... It will feel better that way....' 

"Hehehe.....life's so good when you are selfish..." 

In the morning, Rio took the bus again and headed on a new journey of stealing.

...

Dark Forest of Marik.

After a few hours of traveling, Rio reached his destination, The dark forest of Marik.

Legend has it that a legendary snake 'Marik' dwelled in these woods once upon a time.

"It is very dark here; even though it's daytime, I have to use a torch to see the way, If not for the fact that I know the way from reading the novel, I would have gotten lost already." 

(It's not that Rio has an insane memory; it's just that the location of the chance was described very thoroughly in the novel that Rio read.)

After about half an hour of walking in the dark and gloomy forest, Rio stopped in front of a huge boulder.

He started to inspect the trees around the boulder.

The stump of the tree was painted black and there were white spots on it, Rio walked over to the tree in the middle, which was the tallest tree among the other trees.

Rio gave a punch to the tree trunk and surprisingly, such a huge trunk broke open easily and inside the trunk, a hidden lever was attached.

Rio pulled that lever and waited for a few minutes for the mechanisms to activate slowly. (It's an old and rusted mechanism; it takes time to move...)

After a few minutes, the huge boulder started to move on the left side slowly and a staircase appeared from below it. 

'If I was at least an A-ranker, I could have just directly blown away this magically enhanced boulder without even bothering with these mechanisms...' 

Rio shook his head and started walking down the stairs.

It took him 15 minutes of continuous walking down the stairs till he reached the bottom.

A small, ordinary wooden door appeared at the end of the stairs.

Rio glanced up for a moment and thought.

'The one who made this place must have loved staircases a lot... there are more than a thousand staircases... I am at least half a kilometer underground now...' 

While thinking about this, Rio opened the door and slowly walked inside without hesitation.

Inside was a small room where a single old book was floating in mid-air.

"Here it is..." 

Rio glanced at the book and a slight smile appeared on his emotionless face.

He walked forward and took the book in his own hands and with all his might, he ripped apart the book to shreds.

After being ripped apart, the book turned into small particles of light that slowly entered Rio's head.

A huge amount of knowledge poured into his mind.

Rio stood in a daze as he tried to comprehend the large amount of knowledge in his mind.

It took him a whole hour to finally digest all of the knowledge to a basic level.

[You have successfully learned 'The Elemental Sword Art'!]

[Your understanding of 'The Elemental Sword Art' has been upgraded to F+!]

[You have unlocked the first skill of 'The Elemental Sword Art'! 'Lightning Sword']

"Hmm, good, I got it; with this, I can train and stand my ground against all the problems this world may throw at me in the future..." 

With a determined look on his face, Rio thought:

'It's time to head back to the academy now...' 

Although there are no monsters in the dark forest of Marik, Rio doesn't want to stay here, after all, he knows that the legend of Marik is not just a false myth.

"Better be safe than sorry..." 

Without wasting any more time, Rio headed back the same way he came here.

...

Great Freya Academy, Boys dormitory.

After a few hours, Rio arrived at his dorm room and he immediately laid down on his bed after entering his room.

"Today was a good day! let's check my status now!" 

<Status >

[Name: Rio Flash]

[Class: Swordsman]

[Rank: E-] [Max Rank Potential: No limit(X)]

[HP:800/800] [MP: 300/300]

[STR: 37/100] [SPE: 29/100] [AGI: 27/100] [DEF: 35/100] [INT: 26/100]

[Talent: Limitless(X), Sword Aptitude(X)]

[Techniques: Basic Swordsmanship(E-), Elemental Sword Art(F+)]

[Skills: Body strengthening(F-), Lightening sword(G-)]

[Evaluation: You are an absolute anomaly! although you are weak right now, you have unlimited potential!]

"oh! Even my evaluation has improved, good!" 

"Hmm, I got this limitless talent from the Rift Mountain; surprisingly, it upgraded my sword aptitude too!" 

Now the only thing left is to train this whole month and wait for the entrance ceremony. As for what will happen to the main protagonist? How will he become strong without this talent, which should have been originally his?

"It's simple, that guy has a system shop, he can buy any talent, item, or skill book there. Although this talent must be very costly when buying from there, he can get it easily!" 

Although it's quite difficult to accept that the protagonist can get these things easily, which he gambled his life to obtain, Rio doesn't really care about the protagonist much.

'I am just a small extra; I need to secure things for myself, the protagonist can buy them from his shop with exp if he wants...' 

'So, there's no need to worry; the original plot will not change due to my small stealing activities...'