The Amber Sword

TL: Some stuff I want to talk about, skip to chapter’s name if you wish to skip on my ramblings about my art stuff.

TL: For the past few weeks I have been scratching my head and looking over some fundamental stuff for anatomy, until I recently found a video by cushart on doing fundamental ‘spatial’ construction which I’m currently practicing.

I am actually incredibly bad at constructing a 3D image properly in my mind and needs tons of reference. The tips that my teachers gave were kind of there but not quite enough or too hard to understand. The theory is there, using XYZ as coordinates in space to kind of plot where the fundamental shape should be, but I could never really grasp it properly because it’s too complicated for me.

Cushart’s video goes into details about how he plots and constructs using, well, easy maths (sort of). I’m not sure how far I can go with his method, but I do find it incredibly useful in training fundamentals in ‘spatial XYZ coordinates’. I’m pretty much spending the entire day just to kind of practice in that area, and I’ll probably just keep going at it for the next 10 days.

I keep wanting to edit my old chapters and write some codes for the website, but the issue of needing to settle important fundamentals about anatomy keep coming up, and I really want to get my weakest area to a manageable state by the end of this month.

Anyways, here’s the donated chapter, and thank you very much for your continued support on TAS and putting up with my ramblings.

Also, to make up for the late chapter, I decided to TL one more chapter (which took another few more hours, lol.)

Chapter 106 – Lure (6)

“You don’t wish to learn?” Nalaethar looked at Brendel with complete ridicule in his eyes.

“I want to, of course I want to.” Brendel rushed his answer out.

[Is there a need to even ask? Which idiot would refuse a Silver Elf’s technique?]

“The Elven techniques can’t be taught to you, so there’s no need to think about it.” Nalaethar’s eyes changed back to its usual taciturn look. “Don’t be so hasty, I already told you our techniques are specifically designed for my race.”

Brendel nodded, but his mind said otherwise: “Then…?”

“I can teach you something else that we learned,” Nalaethar paused for a moment: “Do you know how important it is to determine how strong your enemies—“

“Hold on!” Brendel drew in a breath rapidly and interrupted: “Are you talking about the ability ‘Probe’?”

Brendel was trying hard to restrain himself from beating his fists into the air. The unsociable Silver Elf suddenly looked like he was becoming affable, Brendel looked hopefully at him.

He had been relying on numbers from the system to gauge the NPC enemies’ levels, and had always felt disturbed by the lack of accurate information on their stats. He used his own experience to recall vital enemies’ stats and their favored techniques, but there was no way for him to recall every one of them.

With the ability ‘Probe’, he would be able to see the characters’ entire list of stats and their skillsets, and once the ability was raised to high levels, the system would even gave an Overall Power Rating. Judging whether they are strong or weak would be a breeze for him.

In the game, Marden also taught this ability, but when Brendel tried asking him about it in this world, he discovered that the old soldier did not know that ability at all. When he thought about the reason, he recalled that he met Marden very late in the game and that the latter learned the ability from someone else. (TL: Marden is the captain of Bucce’s guards, in case you can’t remember. Also I checked this with prior records and I TLed it as ‘exploration’ back then. Now that the ability is explained clearly, I’m changing it to Probe.)

“‘Probe’?” Nalaethar shook his head: “We simply call it ‘Evaluation’, if a name is needed. It is something every Silver Elf warrior would learn, so that we can gauge the battlefield with that particular skill.”

“Huh?” Brendel looked blankly at the Elf. “What exactly is it used for?”

He had never heard of a skill like that before. The closest skill to Probe was Eagle Eye, a skill that was much better. Not only did it have the same effects of Probe, there was a chance to steal techniques of the enemies killed. However, he would never be to learn this technique because the person who taught it was against Aouine’s princess, and he had no interest to betray this kingdom.

But he was certainly interested in this new skill that he had never heard before. Given how formidable the Silver Elves were, the skills that they recognized would definitely be good stuff.

The Elven commander stared at Brendel as he replied: “I remember that you said you would bring victory to us. I had kept your words in my mind and shall use this skill as a bet. I’ll teach this skill to you if you are able to bring victory to us.”

Once the Elven commander finished speaking, he turned his head away and smiled faintly without Brendel’s notice.

[Shit, I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. Well that’s fine. Both victory and the skill are as good as mine anyways. An unknown skill in the game that I have never seen or heard before….. That’s a little surprising.]

Suddenly he felt the Nightsong Tiger’s elbow knocking on his side. He looked at where the latter was pointing and noticed the mercenaries readying their weapons. Even though it was only for a short moment, he knew that the long awaited enemies had arrived.

The first group that entered the valley were thirty odd Lizardmen dragoons.

They trod under the moonlight and proceeded through the cold boulders, quickly reaching the lowest point of the valley. The next group of units were the Lizardmen infantry with lances and crossbows. These monsters were not like a formal army, and the equipment on their bodies were messily put together. There were no banners that they carried, and were comprised of small squadrons led by Lizardmen who wore an armband.

The leaders of the small squadrons chattered and made a din, gurgling high pitch noises that kept the individuals who were out of order and their flanks from becoming too scattered. They marched in disorderly lines of twos and threes and did not form a tactical formation because they were still far away from the humans they were after.

The long snaking army of Lizardmen passed through the valley, and the mercenaries turned their heads one by one to look for Brendel’s signal, but he shook his head. The Lizardmen were not the only enemies and it was not the best moment to attack yet.

After a few minutes later, the Dark Bishop finally appeared. Because he was not a melee profession, he did not appear in the front or flanks, and was surrounded by a bunch of high ranking disciples. Brendel recognized them easily as high-ranking disciples from their attire, and also spotted two single-armed demons walking along them with large strides. They were called Bachsa; they were once warriors with great sins cast into hell and subsequently turned into lesser demons which had formidable attacking strength.

More than half of the Lizardmen had crossed beyond the mercenaries.

Brendel suddenly looked to his left and right before asking: “Where’s Amandina?”

“It seems that Miss Romaine had called her away.” The Nightsong Tiger answered.

Brendel answered with a contemplative affirmation. He was slightly worried about that crazy lass causing mayhem again, but he felt better once he heard Amandina was with her. The only thing left to do was to properly handle this battle. He stared at the valley, with the Lizardmen not detecting the killing intent from him.

The youth carefully pulled out his sword, taking care to place it under the shadows and pointing to the enemies.

It was the signal to attack.

The curtains were pulled back and the battle commenced with crossbows firing at the same time. The mercenaries carefully aimed for their preys as they clenched their teeth and pulled the triggers. The taut strings shot the metallic bolts out and returned to their former unloaded positions. The slightly misty air parted from the projectiles and dull thuds could be heard as the bolts bit into flesh.

The Lizardmen were only in time to turn their heads as they heard the ‘twang’ sounds, and more than a dozen of their men who carried crossbows were shot down. Even though most of them did not lose their lives from that, the immense impact had knocked them painfully to the ground and caused them to lose their abilities to continue fighting.

“”””Attack!””” High-pitched chattering and screams could be heard from the Lizardmen.

The Lizardmen who were not fully evolved instinctively tried to get ready for battle, but the second wave of bolts were fired unerringly into their midst once again. Their own ranged Lizardmen were picked off one by one, and panic started to spread amongst them like wildfire. The foliage suddenly parted and twenty Elven warriors wielding broadswords charged at them with a disciplined formation, displaying the fervent aura of the warriors seven centuries ago and making it seem like there were thousands of warriors behind them.

Such were their killing intent.

The Dark Bishop were nearly frightened out of his senses when he saw this scene. He immediately thought that the Lizardmen must have offended this ancient race one too many times and caused them to reappear in this world after disappearing for hundreds of years.

[I’m going to kill that fucking lizard Hewjil! Shit, this is the famous Silver Elven army that participated in the War of the Holy Saints!]

The Dark Bishop’s hands trembled as he stared the Silver Elves who had the strength of the strongest Gold-ranked fighters.

He really wished that the Lizardmen were enough to act like cannon fodder and stall for a little time, but it seemed like it was wishful thinking. The immense potency of their charge was like a stake driving into the heart of the Lizardmen’s formations, causing them to be knocked high up in the sky with blood and sinew raining down. Their lithe and bony structures then crashed loudly onto the ground, causing them to die immediately or become heavily injured.

The heavy Elven infantry quickly regrouped and continued to decimate their lines. Even though the Lizardmen outnumbered them by ten times, they were one-sidedly slaughtered.

The mercenaries continued to reload and fire and gave support to the Elven infantry, while Brendel and Nightsong Tiger and the Elven commander stealthily moved at the same time towards the battlefield.

Brendel was seeing something that he did not expect as numbers and lights kept flashing in his eyes. His XP was going up all the time. The XP obtained from his mercenaries was one thing—

[Holy shit! Boosted XP mode because I entered the conditions for a 100% completion rating for this quest? Going by game logic I should actually receive very little XP because the Silver Elves have higher levels than the Lizardmen!]