City of Sin

Book 1, 73

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.

It took less than three minutes for him to execute a set of battle techniques. In fact, this set of battle techniques was made up from a few separate moves, some of them being very peculiar. For example, a move that once saved Richard’s life— the lizard crawl. This set of fighting techniques was executed perfectly, such that even the Blade of Calamity would be impressed if he saw it. Strangely, Richard automatically performed at his best whenever Gaton was around.

Richard was not a warrior. Although he had a good foundation to become one from his life in the mountains, he had sacrificed some of his physique for the sake of becoming a mage. Even with Sharon’s meticulous care he didn’t have the makeup to be a gifted warrior anymore, so moves focused on accuracy were more suited to him.

Gaton showed no sign of joy or admiration when he saw it, however. He instead shook his head, saying, “Hey, show me that piece of broken metal in your hand!”

Richard handed over the dagger to Gaton obediently. This dagger was made of refined steel, six times heavier than normal steel and enchanted with obscurity and sharpness. The obscurity enchantment was what made it a dull black, almost unable to reflect light so it could be concealed in the dark. The sharpness enchanted made it 20% more effective than a normal blacksteel dagger as well. In the hands of a decent assassin, this dagger could exhibit great ability to kill.

All this quality made it expensive. It was easily worth over 8000 coins. Of course this wasn’t anything in the Deepblue, but it was a dagger that Naya had gifted Richard from his personal collection for self defense. Just this could highlight the insurmountable gap between a normal elite and a legendary being.

Gaton snorted, just crushing the dagger into a ball and throwing it into the mouth of the volcano. “That’s a weapon for pansies! You’re my son, Elena’s son! You’re a runemaster and mage, not a rat sneaking around in the underworld! Of course you could possibly become a legendary being by poking people in the ass, but that isn’t what you’re meant to be! You don’t have that in you at all! Luckily the person who taught you only gave you something basic, it can barely be called a common battle technique, and it won’t affect your future. If not, hmph, I’d have to make a trip to the Deepblue and chop him into pieces!”

Richard wasn’t any normal fifteen-year-old youth. His wisdom had greatly been strengthened over five years of intense testing, to the point that he’d absorbed four times the knowledge the average person would. Thus, his capacity to understand the world around him was equivalent to someone who’d reached his thirties, and his knowledge matched up to someone who was thirty-two or thirty-three.

He did not seem very affected by Gaton’s bold words, instead replying faintly, “I don’t think you need to make a trip down to the Deepblue to deal with the person who taught me this. Forget Mordred, even any one of those four we saw just now would be enough. Why do you want to make a trip down yourself? Are you worried about Master?”

“Why would I be worried about her? What a joke!” Gaton pranced up from the tombstone and raged with an ashen face. This was the most lack of control Richard had ever seen out of him. The man himself realised it as well, immediately forcing a laugh before he slowly sat down on the tombstone as if nothing had happened.

The moment he spoke again, Gaton’s unruly and frivolous behaviour disappeared into a solemn dignity. He looked like an exemplar of an aristocrat, but Richard could sense it was something he was doing to brush off the awkwardness.

“Hmph, that Sharon, why would I be scared of her? But um, honestly, although your father is skillful, I cannot defeat three to five black dragons by myself, at least not yet. So it isn’t very practical for me to fight that money-obsessed woman solo. But if I go to the Deepblue to kill some small fry, she won’t go to the extent to retaliate and kill me. Moreover... For certain reasons, I can’t grievously harm her.” Gaton’s tone was solemn, but his imposing manner was not even half of what it was initially.