The World of Tactics

Chapter Fifteen I: Slice Of Life In The Barrack

"Strictly speaking, the power of the dark is not evil nor good. It never has been nor has it been categorized as anything evil. However, some foolish beings would wrongly associate those dark magic users with evil things. No! They were mistaken because the power of light is also neither good nor evil. It was human nature to mistakenly think that the power of light is associated with goodness while the power of the dark is associated with evil.

How wrong are those foolish beings who have been tried and proven wrong all these years? Indeed, lights can contain darkness, but what those lights are afraid of is mother nature and the cycle comes back. Darkness prevailed against mother nature. In a sense, power is not evil or good. It is only the user of the power that is evil and good.

Listen, foolish descendants. Do not make the same mistake as I do." Written by a high sage with the last of her remaining life force.

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For the last few months of intensive training, nobody could tell that John Smith was already too strong and that those exercises no longer gave him experience points. He had hidden a lot of his abilities and believed that, without proper timing, it is better to reveal too much. Before the training started within the barracks, he had already led Dork into the barracks and left Dork sheltered inside one of the sheds for horses. Amazingly, Dork was surprisingly well accepted within the horse community, even with its little miniature body. Anyway, enough with Dork's situation.

The first day of training was nothing more than the instructor, Stan, teaching them how to properly form a crest. He had already formed his blank crest and he felt that it was not as hard as he had thought, but seeing the struggling kids took days. He did not know if he should be happy to get it right away or feel bad for the kids that had a hard time just forming a blank crest.

After all of them have shown that their blank crest is formed, Stan moves on to instructing them on how to properly engrave the crest and what to engrave the blank crest. Firstly, they were shown three base crests as examples, but they only have to follow the specified crest. For example, they were shown a base militia crest, a slave crest, and a peddler's crest. The one that they needed to copy was the militia crest and he succeeded on a single try. Nothing was too hard when the examples were clearly shown in print and he had higher control of the mana in his body due to his high level.

As for the others, they took quite a few days afterward. He mistakenly thought that it might have been his natural talent to form such a carving on the crest like this. Even though his class has changed to the militia, he, unfortunately, found out that his level limit stays the same and his stats also stayed the same. He found a reason for it after observing the kids around him. All of their growth rates increased by a flat five to ten percent across all growth rates. Some did indeed have a flat twenty percent increase, but that is mostly on only one of the growth rates.

As for him, he does not have a growth rate, so he assumes that is null for him. At least like this, he felt a bit better that he got an additional unallocated point to assign to his stats after each level up. He felt a tint of envy as those kids who got a thirty-four percent growth rate directly went up to forty percent growth rate for that specific stat. However, he could do nothing about his special situation either and he felt that it was not that big of a deal after everything that he had gone through to get here. He traded his peaceful life just to get here and he will finish the training in the barracks before he comes back home.

He started to notice a trend going on around after he got his class though. He noticed that after his class name, there were parentheses and in between the parentheses was a grade. Within his parentheses is printed, 'Grade 1.' It was the same situation for all of the other kids that had become militia as well. As for the soldiers, they were in grade two. As for those in grade three or higher, he had only seen it on Oreo Burger and Louise Jones. He could not tell what the difference was between grade and rank along with their uses.

What he roughly concluded was that the grade might have been a growth rate modifier. At each grade, the growth rate of the said person would increase or decrease accordingly to their specific class. That is assuming that the growth rate decreases. As for rank, that is a measurement of power or levels which he concludes at around every ten levels. For every ten levels equals a rank. He, for example, is currently level twenty. Hence, he is ranked two with a grade of one. In conclusion, he had the potential of a grade one while his combat power is equal to a rank two combatant.

Even though a lot has happened, his level is still capped at twenty and he had no way of improving his stats at all. The training was not rough at all, it was just intensive physical training that gave him no benefits whatsoever. Even so, he could conclude that every other trainee does gain experience every so often. However, different people have different growth rates and rates of gaining experience, and some just grow in level sooner than others. Many months passed by while his weapon mastery was still stuck at rank C and he saw no improvements whatsoever. The same training regime stayed the same throughout the whole year until it was time to finally graduate.

For a year of intensive training. He is stuck at the same level, stats, and weapon mastery rank. Even so, he did gain something else of value. In the cycle of learning, he took pleasure in checking out the desolate library in the barracks where none of the children ever wanted to go into. Usually, they would focus on more training during their free time. As for his free time, there was none, since he would be found within the library to be reading all sorts of knowledge. Due to this, he had made little to no acquaintance with the other trainees.

The same goes for mastering weapon mastery as well. Using weapons in a life and death battle greatly increases weapon mastery, just like the time when his training lance broke apart. This is also the main reason why his weapon mastery has been stuck at rank C throughout the year with barely any progress. He also figures out the durability of the weapons as well. With proper maintenance, he also saw that the durability would be restored a few points or so. Even so, the degradation after use overwhelms the durability even with proper maintenance.

He got an inkling of an idea during his first few battles with the goblins and wolves, but he never really figured out how the durability of the weapon works. He did a clear test during the battle examination and finally knows for sure that durability has only as many uses as it was stated in the weapon durability. Of course, that was under certain conditions. For example, if he were to wield a newly made bronze lance that had fifty durabilities. If he were to attack fifty times and all of his blows hit the opponent during about. Then his bronze lance would break right after the fiftieth hit.

With proper maintenance after the battle. He is confident that he could restore at least one-fifth of the used durability. Over the years, his bronze lance has already crossed half of the bronze lance's durability. Through proper maintenance, his bronze lance was still hanging strong with use. In a battle, he could still attack at least twenty times before it broke. If the bronze lance still hangs on, proper maintenance and he could restore at least five or so durability. The other way to fully restore its durability is to reforge it with additional materials.

Not only that, he learns that there are weapon triangles to watch out for during battle. The lance can beat the sword, while the sword beats the ax, and it circles where the ax beat the lance. That was just for the basic weaponry that he found written in an undisclosed heavy leather book. He also found out something about magic's advantages and disadvantages when up against the opponent. Anima magic is strong against light magic, light magic is stronger against dark magic, and dark magic is strong against anima magic.

As for specific kinds of magic systems within anima. He even found out that, specifically, fire magic beats wind magic, wind magic beats thunder magic, and thunder magic beats fire magic. Coincidentally, he came to know that every weapon does have its advantages and disadvantages. Regarding the dark magic system, he still has no clue about how it works. Up till now, he only knew about phantom magic. Otherwise, he had no clue about other dark magic. Even with light magic, he had no clue about it as well.

However, since the knowledge within the hard leather book is quite a lot. He even got to know that there were impossible weapons that contradicted the triangle weapon theory. Such as the ax breaker. The ax breaker is a lance that was created to fight against users that are holding ax weapons, but it will become disadvantaged when up against a sword. This kind of knowledge was something new and he kept going to the barrack's library with hopes of finding more about such weapons. Over the years, he found nothing else about the weapon contradiction and their specific names.

Leaving behind the weapons, the acquaintances that he had over the years were at most thirty to forty people out of all of the other trainees that numbered hundreds. Well, the only reason why he got to know them was through his dedication to going through the library and he would occasionally have brief encounters with them. Even so, he was not someone to have a conversation with, and usually, it was the other way around. In the end, there were only five people that would usually hang out in the library with him.

The five were: Kevin, Plucker, Claudia, Sam, and Miller [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The names were organized in the way he had encountered them. Kevin was the first person that he met and their encounter was nothing special as he came upon Kevin while looking for the direction of the library. Coincidently or not, Kevin was also going the same way as well and he followed behind shamelessly.

For Plucker, he encountered Plucker while he 'borrowed' a book from the library and found a good spot to read under the shade of a tree. Plucker was training nearby and things continued like this for a few times and Plucker could not contain his curiosity. So, Plucker started to talk to him along with a few questions and it was not long before Plucker started to occasionally go to the library with him to read a book or two.

As for Claudia, she was different from them. From his observation, he could tell that Claudia was from a noble family and she could use magic with the class of apprentices. At the same age, she was getting close to a marriageable age, but due to some sort of circumstance, she did not like the arranged marriage and hid as a mage's apprentice. Kevin and Plucker became love rivals after the two found out that Claudia would occasionally attend the library. He got to know her through the exchange of opinions and their viewpoints on certain nerdy topics such as weapons, tactics, and many other things.

Finally, there were Sam and Miller. The two were orphans and happened to want to learn how to read and write. So, as a dedicated, educated learner, he slowly imparted a basic systematic learning guide for the two. Occasionally, the two would follow him to ask about the difficulty that they encountered during their journey during learning. It was quite easy for him to guide the two and the two were also quite smart, even though the two started a little later than most of the others. Likewise, the five begin to follow him into the library just like this.

Occasionally, he would give the five a curious glance or two at their current levels and today was the last day of observing the five. The five of them had already reached the max level at level twenty. It was through his constant reminders that the five took their training seriously. As for how Claudia, Sam, and Miller train. He got no chance to preview because he was limited within the barracks and could not visit other parts of the area. As such, he knew that the barracks are separated into many sections and departments that train in different directions.

Since he trains with the lance, he could only train with other similar trainees that use the lance. For those that train on the sword, ax, and others such as magic. He got no clue since he could neither visit the other training grounds nor get the chance to view the other trainee trains. Kevin and Plucker train with the same weapon as him so he can see the two during training. As for Claudia, Sam, and Miller. The three had their way of training.

With a lonely sigh, he closes the book that he had just finished reading. Over in the arc of the library's doorway were five figures. Today is an important day and might be the last day for him in the Kalbridge Capital. He could imagine that in the next few days that he would be coming home soon. He stood up and calmly took the book back to where it belonged before approaching the five with a smirk. Today was just a perfect day to become stronger.