Book 1, Chapter 73 (1/2)

Inheritance of the Silver Moon

“Is there something on your mind?” Gaton’s voice startled Richard out of deep thought. He regained his composure immediately, shaking his head in denial, “Nothing.”

Gaton didn’t continue questioning him, instead walking a couple steps to randomly sit on one of the tombstones. He seemed to have no respect for his ancestors, something that left Richard greatly astonished.

From what he’d learnt the nobles of Norland were very respectful of their ancestors. Many families passed down secret magic to preserve parts of their ancestors’ souls, using their inherited knowledge to unleash powerful secret arts. Outside of the various deities and the Church of the Eternal Dragon, ancestor worship was an important part of the continent’s faith. In fact, the barbarians of Klandor and the various marine tribes paid more importance to their ancestors than the deities themselves. Ancestors were the main target of their faith.

“You think this is unbelievable?” Gaton smiled and looked at Richard.

Despite always feeling like he was being stabbed in his heart, Richard had to admit that Gaton’s actions seemed to match his intentions, and Gaton’s smile was indeed filled with charisma.

“Us Archerons only care about practicality. If we want to express our respect to the ancestors, we’ll awaken the power of our bloodlines and sire offspring with great power. That’s more effective than anything else, and it’s the sort of respect that runs deep in our blood and soul! Alright kid, now let’s see what you’ve learnt in the past few years. Forget magic and runes, I’m not knowledgeable about that myself. Your body and footwork makes it look like you’ve learnt some techniques. Show me!”

Gaton crossed his arms and sat down randomly, his gaze continuously sweeping across Richard’s body. Every glance he took made Richard feel like the man was seeing his true self.

Richard calmed himself down, taking out a dull black dagger before he started displaying the underworld battle techniques he’d learnt from Naya. The Blade of Calamity’s curse was actually a bloodline ability, so he couldn’t learn it, and even if he could he was still a runemaster and mage. He wouldn’t have the time to include such distractions in his daily schedule, lest he end up being a jack of all trades.

These techniques weren’t very complicated, their difficulty lying in the accuracy of the execution. When the Blade of Calamity attacked, he could use his knife to cut a strand of hair into three. Naya’s limiting factor was actually the power of his body, but he could use his pure skill to jump levels in a fight. Before disappearing from the underworld, a mere level 16 Naya had repeatedly relied on his curse and battle techniques to kill even saint level elites.

Richard’s numeric vision allowed him to extend this to its logical limit. He could even identify the millimetre-level changes to the position of his blade after every strike— if he was five millimetres high, or two millimetres low, he would amend his next strike to fix that difference. Of course he wasn’t a martial artist himself, so there was a limit to the control he had over his own body. He could choose the right tool and place when crafting his runes, so he could control his precision to under two tenths of a millimetre— one tenth was the limit of a runemaster and any further improvement would have to come from one’s understanding of magic and usage of materials— but in battle it would be great if he could adjust to a single millimetre. And when he used Eruption, his accuracy would plunge.