"Hey Galahad, I wanted to ask what the sword aura was" I ask Galahad as he drives the carriage.
"Simply put, it is the energy a swordsman releases through his sword, only people skilled with the sword are able to release this energy, it's commonly called sword aura by swordsmen" He tells me as he stares onto the road.
How was I able to use sword aura? I question my traits, maybe it increases the affinity It correlates with, the Knight trait increases your swordsmanship rapidly I guess. And for the Wizard trait, I guess it increases your affinity with magic. The only trait I was really curious about was the curser, I had yet to understand this trait, and I had no knowledge of how to use curses. I looked through the limited amount of books, yet found little to no information about curse users, it seemed as if they were quite the rare group of people, only a few being recorded in history
Kurg!
The carriage shook as we start hearing some rumbling come closer and closer towards us. Every knight was on edge, as they hopped off of their horses and drawing their swords out. Their faces turn pale with terror as they look past the forest.
I turn to where they are looking, to be greeted with a golem like creature, it had a red orb for an eye, and its body created from the dirt we stood on. Its towering figure gets closer, each step it takes, comes another rumbling.
I pray it doesn't notice us, that must be what the knights are thinking right now. Yet their prayers don't mean anything as the giant thing of dirt seemed to already notice us.
"Please don't come any closer" the knights whisper with fright
I look over to Galahad, his face full of anger. He gets up, grabbing his mighty sword, and walking towards his knights. He let out an aura of confidence, in which you would feel safe anywhere near him.
"As the Knights of Schiet, you can't cower in the face of danger!" with his eyebrows furrowed he shouts at his knights, his voice shaking the surrounding air, this was the first time I had seen him full of anger
I get up from my seat and walk forward, wanting to test my skills that I had honed for the past few months. Galahad looks back to see me walking towards him, and he releases a slight smirk before turning towards the golem again.
"You think you could fight this?" He asks me, still keeping its focus on the golem.
"I don't know about defeating it, but I could definitely fight it" I tell him as I unsheathe my sword.
Throughout the past few months, my swordsmanship wasn't the only thing I had worked on, Galahad had a few books on magic abilities which I had borrowed. It took quite the time to learn some of the magic, but after learning a few, the rest had become much easier.
With a few chants, I cast a spell, and in the blink of an eye, a pair of large hands come breaking through the ground where the golem stood, grabbing its legs, impairing its movement. With the golem stuck in its tracks, I rush towards it with my sword, as I send a slash towards the golems legs, I am stopped by the fact that my swords won't even scratch the golem.
"Use the sword aura!" Galahad shouts towards me.
I was only able to release the sword aura a few times throughout the months of training. I had noticed that each time I released it, I was completely focused on my sword. As I try and focus on the energy flowing from my body into the swords, the golem swings its giant hands, knocking me off of it towards the ground. With some wind magic, I stop my body before it hits the ground, and seconds later I boost myself back towards it with another wind magic.
As my body dashes through the air, towards the golem, I try to focus on my sword, imagining the energy from my body flowing into my sword and creating the sword aura that coated the sword. I swing towards its arm, severing it from its body. I land on its shoulders, and it swings its other arm to get me, but this time, I slice through its hands, leaving it split into two.
The golem uses brute force, trying to get loose from the giant hands grabbing its legs, yet it was a struggle with no prevail since the hands had no signs of weakening or loosening its grip on its legs.
"Go for the eye!" Galahad gives me instructions
I use my wind spell to leap towards its eyes, as I reach its head, I am face to face with it, I can clearly see the giant orb like eye. It was like a gem shining with the light hitting it. I fasten my grip on my sword and swing down at it, but to my surprise, it left no mark on it. Even with the sword aura, my attack had no effect on it.
With disappointment, I rush back to Galahad and inform him of this. He looks at me with a smirk before rushing towards the giant monster. Within a matter of seconds, he reaches the golem and jumps towards its head before slashing down, shattering the orb, and completely dividing the golem in half.
He did all that without any magic, he didn't even use his sword aura, I think with my mouth agape in awe. I had set a goal, with these traits that I have chosen, I want to be the strongest under the Heavens. Galahad had shown me the true strength a master swordsman could unleash.
Ding!
A message popped up in front of my face, I look around and see that no one notices this message either. As I read the message, a smile forms across my face.
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Lesser Trait Unlocked
Magic Swordsman
The person can incorporate magic into their swordsmanship more efficiently.
20% boost in learning speed in Swordsmanship and Magic
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Magic Swordsman, I seem to have unlocked this by using my swordsmanship and magic together. Lesser traits seem to also give boosts once unlocked. As I start to head back towards the carriage, I sense something changing within my body, as it changed, it left a stunning pain within my chest, after the pain left, my body seemed lighter, and stronger too.
I try and sense my mana within me, and in surprise, the pool of mana had increased, and there was another energy flowing within my body too, the two energies clash and flow chaotically within me before they calm down and settle down, creating two separate pools of energies.
This new energy must be the sword aura, it had a different color from the mana, which was blue. The energy of the sword aura was a mix of white and yellow. It seemed quite weak, and the energy pool was half the size of the mana pool.
"That was quite the battle you had" Galahad says as he walks towards me laughing, "Those books I brought sure were handy for you, weren't they?"
"They were quite the books" I told him with a smile.
As I look towards the knights, I see that they looked shocked, I would be too. The first time they had seen me wielding the sword was when I fought Durm, and I was quite weak barely being able to hold my own against him, but now I was able to use the sword aura, and took on a golem on my own.
I walk towards the carriage with all the knights gazing upon me before I sit. Galahad also returns to the carriage and sits down, grabbing ahold of the reins, before ordering the soldiers to mount their horses. Within a few seconds, the carriage starts to move again.
"Only half a day of travel before we reach Schiet now" Galahad tells me as I start to close my eyes for a quick nap. I could still hear the knights speaking, and the sounds of the forest due to the heightened senses.
After what seemed like a few hours, I was awoken by the shaking from Galahad. As I slowly open my eyes, still half asleep, I see a gate, a giant gate, created with stones reaching up to 50 meters tall. And in front of us was a gatekeeper.
Durm and the gatekeeper seemed to be having a conversation, before Durm waved towards us to go through the gate. Durm gives his farewells to the gatekeeper, as he hands him a pouch full of coins. That must be the entrance fee, I think to myself. As the carriage passes through the gate and into the kingdom, we were surrounded by houses of the medieval style, all made with stone and supported by wooden beams that protruded out of the ground.
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Bestiary
Name: Dirt Golem
Monster Tier: 4
Description: Monster made of dirt in the shape of a humanoid behemoth, a creature created through magic. The only way to kill the behemoth is by destroying the magic orb located on its body.
Abilities: …