Chapter 11: Part 1

Soul Art Online

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 11: Revelations 

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- Arthas -

I sent another punch in the air before relaxing my position when a notification appeared in front of me.

Shingen-ryu [Unique Skill] [Level 26/50] [Exp: 1/26000]

Shingen-ryu or "Style That Originates From The Heart" is a school of Martial Arts in which the practitioner learns hand-to-hand combat as well as the ability to control their aura for combat.

Passively Increases +2 STR +2 END +2 DEX +2 INT +2 WIS per level.

Current Increase: +52 STR +52 END +52 DEX +52 INT +52 WIS

This Skill was insane no matter how many times I saw it.

+52 increase to all stats and this was when I was just halfway through the Skill.

That's more than five levels of any top tier T5 Class. The only problem with it was that it's levelling speed had decreased a lot.

I wonder if there is any way to increase the levelling speed of my Skills.

Talking about Skills, the Man Slayer Class came equipped with a Skill of its own, a skill similar to the Shingen-ryu.

The Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū Style Swordsmanship.

In fact, I don't get active Skills by levelling up the Class but rather by mastering the swordsmanship style.

The Game Master seems to want the players to actually learn swordsmanship over just bruteforce levelling the class.

Still, it's not like I had any problems with it. The Skill gave Passive Increases like the Shingen-ryu style too, which made the stat growth of the Man Slayer Class even more absurd.

It was a T5 Class and yet its stat growth was similar to a T6 Class.

As expected of a Class obtained for fixing a bug.

Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū [Level 11/100] [Exp: 110/11000]

Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū is an ancient kenjutsu developed to allow a single samurai to defeat numerous foes single-handedly. Rooted in the concept of ichi no tachi, or to strike in a single blow, practitioners of this style use a combination of immense speed and agility, battōjutsu, and acquired, observation-based pseudo-clairvoyance that permits a practitioner to anticipate an opponent's moves.

Passively Increases +2 STR +2 END +2 DEX +2 INT +2 WIS per level, unlocks new Skills every 5 levels.

Current Increase: +22 STR +22 END +22 DEX +22 INT +22 WIS

The Skills I had unlocked till now are Ryūtsuisen, Ryūkansen and Ryūshōsen.

Our plan to get ready in three days turned out to be impossible.

As they say the best laid plans of mice and men….

The route through the Forest leading to Lannisport was destroyed….due to the flood caused by us breaking the dam.

Yeah….it was our own fuck up.

The Dam was being repaired but it would still take around a week or two to complete everything and the route to open up again. This left us stuck here so we decided to take care of some important things.

These last few days everyone has been busy collecting money for the next expedition.

Veena was busy using her new recipes and selling new products and training people to run the guild, Shiroe was helping out the guild members plan for how and where to level up at the fastest speed and even offer advice for people who need to select future classes.

This left only Star and me.

We went out hunting together a few times and I found the guy to be quite chill.

If anything, he was dedicated to the grind. The guy didn't want to sit back and be the weakest link in our team so he was almost always out hunting.

As I was the only one free in our team, I decided to assist him. Just the fact that I was in the party with him, not only increased his Exp. Gain by 10% but also increased the Phy. and Mag. Atk. by 10% giving him an extra boost in his levelling spree. Not to mention, I had healing which enabled us to go wild.

His Apprentice Swordsman Class was levelling at an insane speed due to us regularly hunting down T4 monsters.

Sometimes we were joined by Shiroe while Veena stayed and worked on the medicines as crafting also levelled up her Pharmacist Class.

Currently, she was the highest money earner in the group.

In fact, most of our missions were to get ingredients for her to make the Greater Healing Pill as materials needed to make those were not available in Llyne. They were found in the Marshlands and that's where we mostly hunted.

It was good practice though as our previous methods of sniping enemies from trees didn't work anymore as the T4 and even some T3 monsters could easily break down trees or even large boulders given enough time.

We had to constantly change our strategies to keep up with the enemies. It was a nice experience for our team and even gained me another level.

And this has been our routine for the past few days. Hunting in the morning, coming back and watching over the guild matters and practising Shingen-ryu or Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū in whatever free time I had.

I took a towel and wiped off my sweat.

Another thing that happened was the summer.

This being the mediaeval world, there was no electricity or other such facilities and while that didn't matter that much in winter as we could still warm ourselves with fire or warm clothes but the summers were absolutely disgusting.

I had asked around and found that in the bigger cities, they had enchanted stuff to keep the place cool but unfortunately we couldn't buy such things nearby.

I just hoped that Sabaody Archipelago has such stuff or we will need to hire enchanters.

Hell, at this point I am just tempted to go there and buy those enchanted goods and maybe we could even sell them here for a much larger profit margin.

The only relief in this time was the new spell Veena had bought from the Black Market for 70 thousand Gold Coins despite us trying to save money for the auctions, the Ice Wall. We didn't use it for attack but rather carried the Ice Wall for cooling water and other things.

In fact, when some people saw us carrying the ice, they even asked to buy it for Gold Coins. Obviously we sold it. We needed to recover the money used to buy the Skill Book.

Everyday for two hours, people lined up to buy Ice from us, every large block for 20 Gold Coins. This was one of the main reasons for her being the highest earners of the group.

I entered the house and Veena was sitting in the living room, working on the next batch of medicines to sell.

"Oh, finished with today's practice?"

"Yes. I got another level up for the skill and decided it was as good a time as any to stop for today."

"Hmm, you shouldn't overwork yourself."

I smiled at her words. "Says the one who keeps making medicines from the break of dawn till dusk. I personally think the selling of ice is actually a welcome change as you at least get two hours to rest in between."

The reason we were all pushing ourselves so hard was because Veena had been working insanely hard and that actually made her guilty as we couldn't contribute much to the team.

So we did the thing we were the best at, level up and get stronger. Ultimately, strength was the most important thing in this world at this point.

"It's nothing. You should take a bath first. I will finish by then and take a bath myself."

"Alright." I nodded.

Cold baths were the best.

I stepped out of the bath and called out to Veena to enter.

"Oh, you are done. I am done here too." She said as she kept the instruments back in her inventory and got up, stretching her body.

She was wearing a thin white gown due to the heat and it was sticking to her body due to sweat, outlining the shape of body clearly.

As usual, she was not wearing anything inside.

I shook my head, pushing the thoughts out of my head in the other direction but I was pretty sure I saw her smirking at me.

Ah….she was in one of those moods once more.

The game between us has been going around for far too long for me to blush at such a small matter, especially when we slept together every night so I just gave her a normal smile.

I was pretty sure I saw her smile widen at this, accepting the challenge.

She just sashayed towards her room while I shook my head at her antics and dried my hair and changed into my shorts.

In the last few months, my hair has been growing a bit. I guess I will have to get a haircut soon.

She came out of her room after some time and entered the bath.

I knew she was going to take some time inside so I decided to take some rest till then.

While the physical exhaustion could be managed due to my high stats, mental exhaustion was something I had to deal with by myself.

It was after thirty minutes or so that I heard the door of the bath open and looked in that direction.

Veena came out….as usual in her towel. This time however, it was shorter than normal. It was barely covering her breasts and went down to her upper thighs. Half of her ass was sticking out of the towel and this part was exposed more as she walked.

My eyes widened but I quickly reigned myself in.

I was not going to lose this game so I gave her a simple smile again and closed my eyes while desperately trying to think of other things.

She didn't say anything again and when she came out, we heated some food we had bought from outside and had dinner in peace and then finally went to bed.

"So,how was your day today?" She asked.

"Same old. The quest was simple and Star had to collect his new equipment today so we returned early. How was your day?"

"The same. Shiroe was right. That girl Elaine has talent….I think she….might be someone from the Supernatural side of the world."