Assessment

"We are..... the Doom Bringers!" a seemingly young looking man proclaimed.

"....." Rey exchanged glances with Ed after hearing the man speak and they both lowered their guards.

"*sigh* And here I thought that we were in danger. Haha!" Ed chuckled.

"That's right, if you guys want to act like bandits choose a better name. Doom Bringers sounds so childish and don't involve other people."

Rey put back his knuckles and walked past the group, laughing all the way and mocking them.

"Lea... leader.... der"

"Huh!" the leader of the group snapped back to reality and looked at the man standing behind him.

"We are about to reach the location. You seemed a bit out of it, are you ok?" the man was concerned about their leader.

Since this morning, he has been acting strange, often spacing out.

"You are a hundred years too early to be worried about me. Go back to your position and keep an eye on them for now."

The man went back to his position while the leader kept thinking about what happened the last night.

The previous night after they had gone back, the rookie approached him to discuss about their plan of action for the next day. That's when he proposed that they should surround the two boys and let him introduce themselves as the 'Doom Bringers' to conceal their identities.

The leader not wanting to deal with him any longer, decided to agree to his plan and went back to sleep. But that single decision robbed him of his sleep as everytime he only dreamt of them following the rookie's plan and getting laughed at by the two boys.

It was a nightmare for the leader as he valued respect over anything else and this plan of action made him lose face in front of two boys.

That's why after waking up, the first thing he did was to smack the rookie for his plan as he couldn't get it out of his head, constantly getting distracted by it.

After continuing for some more time, they approached a relatively large plain area where the two boys stopped to rest. Confirming that it was time for them to execute their plan, he gave the orders.

Two of the men cut off from the group and headed towards Rey & Ed.

To assess Rey & Ed, he decided to test their strength by the number of men they could fight against. Starting from two, he would send in one more guy everytime the two boys managed to successfully fight them.

This would allow him to judge their level as if they can't even survive against three of them, then it is better to kill them and on the off chance that they managed to survive, he would think about it then.

"How much longer do you think?"

"A couple more hours, I think." Ed replied while looking at his status window.

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Name: Edmund Clive System: M-4869

Age: 15 years Attributes: Lightning

Lvl: 19

Exp: 1150/5250

Titles:

Class: None

Affiliation: Sandalwood Empire

Str: 173 Dex: 132

Agi: 160 Sta: 135

Int: 170 Charm: 200

Senses: 70

Unassigned points: 380

Skills: Close combat (F), Weapon Mastery (A), Intermediate Hammer Wielding (D), Beginner Blacksmithing (E), Electric Discharge (D), Mineral Extraction (C), Ass Twerking (SSS)

Passives: Increased knowledge acquisition (A), Lotus Breathing (C)

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"All this time, I didn't get a chance to distribute my stat points. Put 150 points in strength, 50 in intelligence, 80 in intelligence and the rest in stamina." after distributing all his points, he turned towards Rey who was standing beside a tree.

"Don't you also have points to assign?"

"I have, but I'll keep them in case we are in trouble any assign them according to our needs."

"Fair enough. But why do I feel like you are acting smarter than usual?"

"I also feel that way, like something is not right with....." Rey stopped mid sentence sensing something. "I think we are being followed."

"Could be other travellers like us."

"Could be but I think we should be ready just in case."

Ed turned around in the direction Rey was pointing at and indeed felt two people coming their way.

Soon the two people reached them and as Rey said, attacked them without any hesitation. One of them unsheathed his sword and charged at Rey whereas the other one took out a spear and thrust it at Ed. Ed took out two battle axes and deflected the spear, pinning it to the ground but because of their short reach, he was unable to harm his opponent.

"Tsk.. this is gonna be troublesome."

Meanwhile Rey waited till the man attacked him and at the last moment used Shadow Movements to appear next to the spear wielder instead. Catching him off guard, Rey slashed at his back with the shortsword he materialised.

"Hey, get back here!" the one attacking Rey was shocked when Rey ditched him for his partner.

"Leader is it okay to send the rookie first? It just...."

"He'll be fine, I guess." the rest of the members were observing the fight some distance away.

After Rey caught the man by surprise, Ed closed in on the gap and swung at the man's prominent hand. But the man let go of his spear and instead caught Ed's wrist and threw him at Rey, which the latter avoided by assimilating with his shadow resulting in Ed crashing into the ground.

"That skill sure is troublesome, but it should have its limitations."

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Shadow Assimilation (A) Lv. 3

The skill allows the user to become one with the shadows. The user can merge with any shadow partially or wholly.

•Time limit : 5 seconds

•Cooldown : 15 seconds

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The rookie reached Rey as soon as he came out of the shadow and slashed at him vertically with his sword. so tried to avoid the strike by falling back but the other guy had already picked up his spear and appeared behind him, hitting Rey with the back of his spear.

"Kh..." Rey gritted his teeth as the spear handle hit his ribs, breaking a few in the process.

Rey materialised another shortsword and brought it together with the other one to block the sword slash from above but the power was too much as he fell on his knees.

'Put 100 points in agility and the rest in strength.' Rey assigned his stat points which he had saved for moments like these and with the slight increase in his strength, he managed to push back the sword and escaped as the next moment, lightning hit the two men.

Ed had recovered and was waiting for the perfect opportunity to hit the two men with his electric discharge, stalling them for some time.

Rey regrouped with Ed and handed the two shortswords to him while taking out his new knuckles that he got as a gift from Jenny as his old ones were no better than junk now.

These knuckles were better than his previous normal rated knuckles but the spikes on these were of smaller size but that was compensated by their Epic rating.

The two of them to rushed at the two men when Rey suddenly disappeared midway and reappeared behind the rookie who was stunned by Ed's earlier strike.

When Rey appeared, he already had his knuckles covered with essence and punched the rookie in the face, drawing blood.

The rookie seeing that Rey left his torso completely unguarded when punching him, used the hilt of his sword to hit Rey in the stomach and then grabbing his shoulder, hit the same spot with his knee.

"Kh.... you are pretty strong for someone who doesn't use essence." Rey tried to distract the rookie to find an opening.

"What can I do? You don't bring a sword to kill a fly." Rey's plan backfired and instead of his opponent, he was the one getting riled up.

Rey kicked the rookie in the stomach to create some distance but his kick was caught by the rookie who continued with a sweep kick to bring him to the ground.

The rookie got on top of Rey to restrict his movements and started pummeling his face. All the while Rey was trying to channel his essence to his hands but the continuous beating was not making it any easier. After a lot of troubles and checking that the cooldown for shadow movements was over, he appeared behind the rookie using his skill.

As is expecting this, the rookie turned around but this only helped Rey as the darkness blast exploded in his face, forcing him to take a few steps back.

'Ughhh..... if only the leader didn't forbid is from using essence, this kid would have been groveling at my feet by now.'

Earlier when they were discussing the plan, their leader specifically told them to not use essence as it would not even be a fight anymore. No matter how much of a genius they were, fighting high levelled individuals with experience was enough of a challenge for them and using essence will only make it more unfair.

Thus he placed this handicap on them for a fair evaluation.

"This punch really hurt, you know?"

Seeing that his opponent was still recovering from the blast, Rey used quick steps to get a boost and jumped in the air and with the momentum from the skill, kicked him on the side of his face and then closed in to throw a series of punches.

His opponent instinctively brought his guard up, but Rey kept increasing the speed of his punches, leaving many shallow wounds in the rookie's hands.

The rookie tried to find an opening but under the constant barrage of punches, he was unable to find any. He looked at his teammate for help, but he was in a deadlock with Ed who was using the shortswords from Rey. His opponent had various cuts which were starting to turn grey albeit at a very slow rate.

Ed also had stab wounds in the side of his stomach and left shoulder, but he couldn't retreat to heal so as to not give his opponent an opening.

Rey used materialisation to extend the spikes on his knuckles as they were not long enough to do any significant damage. He again started punching, making deeper wounds this time but his opponent's guard was very strong, not giving any opening to injure him further.

So Rey moved behind him using his skill and hit him in the side of his stomach a couple of times, making a deep enough wound for blood to start flowing out and consequently a smile appeared on Rey's face as he looked at the screen in front of him.

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The target has been affected by decay

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Rey had been trying to get the decay status effect on his opponent but the probability was not in his favour.

The rookie felt that he needed to heal himself quickly before it was too late. He focused all his strength in his right foot and turned around kicking Rey.

Rey managed to block the kick with his hands but because his opponent put all his strength behind that kick, he was pushed back a few metres.

The rookie took a few steps back, creating some distance between them and looked at his wound which had already started turning grey.

"Damn, darkness users." he cursed Rey and took out an advanced health potion which removed all status conditions.

"This is the last one I have. I just hope that I don't need it later."

Rey was just regaining his balance after the kick when two daggers barely missed him, grazing his cheeks.