CH27: Oddballs of the Elite Camp II
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CH27: Oddballs of the Elite Camp II
My eyes shifted from Jaras and Ella to the three others who were training close by.
They were Fenton, Ramla and Milos.
Each of them were like Jaras... a diamond in the rough that the guys of the Guild almost gave up on due to the world's peculiarity.
Fenton was a swordsman. He had loved swords since he was young. So much so that he had decided not to use his Pangea if it weren't a sword.
Lo and behold, he finished his second awakening with a black longsword in hand.
The boy celebrated awakening a sword. He didn't even check its grade or ability.
Fenton's father, Drake, was a member of the DoomMane Guild, so he naturally brought his son to the Guild to be trained.
Drake hoped the Guild would take his son in but the instructors informed him they didn't have much hopes for him.
Turned out, Fenton's Pangea was a D-Class Sword Pangea. The Sword had no other obvious ability except being indestructible.
Even this was discovered later.
Fenton wasn't discouraged by the less-than-warm reception his Pangea received. The boy was only interested in using his sword. So much so that he continued training with the sword by attacking an adamantine block.
The people who saw this thought he would damage his sword this way, however, there wasn't a single scratch on the sword on closer inspection.
As a test, Fenton agreed to allow his sword to be attacked by members of the Guild. They found out that the sword was impervious to attack two rings above Fenton without damage. However, upon increasing to an attack from someone three rings above, there was a consequence
While the sword remained without scratch, Fenton lost a lot of stamina. His breathing became laboured.
After resting, the boy asked to be attacked by someone four rings above him. At the time, this was someone in the Noble rank.
His father had to personally request a favour from his superior. The superior reluctantly agreed.
To everyone's shock, the sword remained without damage but Fenton was hurt. It was a light injury but it was enough for everyone to agree to stop the trial there.
This was how it was discovered that Fenton's Andirin was indestructible but not without a price from the boy himself.
However, even knowing this, Fenton's reputation didn't change much.
Andirin was just an indestructible sword. It didn't have anything else that made it more special than any manufactured sword out there. It didn't even have mana abilities.
It only became lighter in Fenton's hands when he channelled mana through it.
The Pangea was deemed useless, then with it being D-class, Fenton's Potential was considered low.
It was only the boy's hard work and dedication to training as well as his father's position within the Guild that allowed him to keep his place amongst the Guild's training recruits.
I somehow heard about Fenton's situation. I paid him a visit to see his condition with my eyes and determine his worth to me.
When I arrived, I saw a lean, brown-haired, 171cm tall teenager continuously swinging his sword against a rock.
The recoil from the strikes shook his body but he ignored it and continued to swing. He continued until he collapsed.
I carried him to the medics, who were already familiar with him since he was a regular at their place. They informed me of how he trained himself to exhaustion every day.
I took the opportunity to touch the teen's body while I listened.
As I expected, his bones and muscles were morphing to withstand his constant practice.
This was a good and bad thing.
It was good because it meant his body was mouldable with little effort. It was bad because if it was moulded badly, it would skew Fenton's development.
And I could already see the signs of this.
After seeing his drive to improve, which reminded me of my situation, and listening to the good but concerned words of the healers, I decided to take the boy in and train him properly.
I would mould him into a competent swordsman.
Sure, Andirin made it impossible for Fenton to fire off mana-based attacks with his sword, this wasn't a demerit in my book like it was in the denizen's books.
Quite the opposite, I like the fact that Andirin wasn't a flashy Pangea.
Plus, I didn't actually believe Andirin was as useless as people thought.
Ironically, even though my body couldn't store mana, I was surprisingly sensitive to its movements, maybe due to the black hole in my body which constantly sucked up the energy.
I noticed that Andirin reacted differently depending on how Fenton channelled mana through it.
It was a vague sense at the time but I felt that when the boy channelled mana through the whole sword body, the sword struck fast. However, when he channelled more mana to the edges of the blade, Andirin left a deeper cut.
There were some other things I noticed but the main point was, aside learning to train his body along with honing his swordsmanship, I also needed to make sure Fenton focused on mana control.
At least, he needed to know how to control his mana flow through Andirin.
When the teen woke up, I offered him to join my Elite camp.
He quickly accepted when I told him I could improve his swordsmanship.
I wasn't a Sword Master or anything in my previous life, but I dabbled enough to be better than the denizens of Arun, at least most of them.
Drake, Fenton's father, also agreed to the arrangement after we told him about it. In any case, the Guild instructors had more or less given up on his son.
He gladly accepted the opportunity since I saw something in his son.
Fenton became the fourth member of the Elite Camp.
This was when I realised that my choices for the Camp were skewing toward pure physical classes.
Zora also fought with mainly physical means.
So, along with Jaras and Fenton, it meant three of the four members of the camp/team were physical fighters.
I realised I needed 'magic-type' members too.
Unfortunately, magic-type i.e. people with mana-based abilities, especially if the Pangea class was high, were strongly regarded by the instructors of the training camp.
I narrowly survived a fallout by poaching Ella. I had no doubt that I would face stiff resistance from the instructors if I tried to poach another 'gem they've spent efforts polishing'.
After days of contemplation, I decided I had no choice.
I went to the head instructor of the normal camp, who was the grey-haired middle-aged man who was my father's comrade. His name was Gunter.
I decided to go over the instructors' heads to Gunter because I knew that however I approached getting someone of the magic type, the instructors would resist me.
So, since I was going to offend them either way, I went directly to their superior so that they'd have no choice but to give me what I wanted.
However, even then, I knew my limits. I only asked for people the instructors had a problem working with and were willing to leave to me.
I expected to get someone with E, F or even G-class Pangea.
I wouldn't have mind much. I never put stock into the class of Pangea and cared more about their functionality.
To my surprise, I was offered a C-class and an A-class.
It was the instructors themselves who recommended the two. Gunter had nothing to do with it.
I understood why they'd be willing to let such gems go after finding out about them.
The person with the C-class Pangea was Milos. He was a baby-faced teen. He had tan-like skin similar to mine. He was skinny and about the same height as Fenton. He had green hair when we met, but he claims his hair was originally black before he awakened his Pangea.
His Pangea was a C-class Pangea called Breath of Nature.
It was a plant based ability which could rapidly grow plants around Milos.
Milos' Breath of Nature was particularly good in growing vines and grasses.
With this kind of Pangea, Milos was advised to become a farmer, however, the boy was adamant about being a Hunter.
He stubbornly took the test of the DoomMane Guild and completes all general training regimen. Apparently, the Breath of Nature gave him the resilience of grasses and vines.
Vines and grasses make up the most number of weeds. Anyone familiar with weeds knows a trait all the common weeds shared was their resilience.
It wasn't easy to eradicate them from a place they've invaded.
Milos was the same.
He was too stubborn to give up his Hunter dream. He trained to the edge of his consciousness everyday just so he won't be kicked out of the Guild.
The instructors had even helped him get a job as a gardener for an alchemist with hopes that the boy would see a better path for his ability, all to no avail.
The boy was still as stubborn as usual.
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The one with the A-rank Pangea was Ramla.
Ramla was a... petite girl. She was barely up to 150cm. Her flat chest also didn't help her case as she was often treated like she was much younger than she actually was.
The Pangea of this brown-skinned beauty was... Shock.
Yep, a very simple name indeed.
Plus, the name was very apt because it did exactly what it's name indicated.
Ramla's Shock was an elemental ability-type Pangea in the form of an electric discharge which shocked anyone in its path.
The Pangea worked even with just her mana. Anything her mana touched could be 'shocked'.
The ability was good and all, except for one little detail.
It was completely non-lethal.
The ability could shock anyone, irrespective of strength, putting them in a stunned state. The duration of the stun was anywhere between a millisecond to ten seconds depending on the strength of the target and the amount of mana used to power the ability.
However, it was completely non-lethal.
Even more, the stun effect disappeared ahead of time when the stunned target was touched.
My mouth opened wide because this ability was a typical crowd control ability used in many fantasy RPG games in my previous life.
I wondered how these Pangea were form and how their classes were determined. Till today, nobody understood this. They only knew that colour of the Pangea determined the raw potential of the Pangea and hence the class.
Back to Ramla, if this was all to her ability, it was still manageable.
The instructors weren't stupid, they could see the merit of the ability.
Unfortunately, beside the non-lethal nature of Shock, it had another problem which made the instructors hesitant about Ramla.
She couldn't control the release of the ability.
When she used her Pangea ability, Shock discharged in a cone-shape before her. She had no control over who it attacked.
Both friends and foe were affected by it.
So, it limited the use of this powerful A-class CC ability.
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As it turned out, the unorthodox applications I taught Zora for her Pangea was common knowledge to the higher-ups of the Guild and the instructors of the normal camp.
So, the instructors hoped that I could do the same for these two seedlings.
They felt it was a shame to waste Milos' determination and Ramla's Shock's potential battlefield usage.
Initially, I was looking for people with flashy large-scale magical attack-type abilities to compliment the physical-types, who already members of my camp.
However, I changed my mind after seeing Milos and Ramla.
Large-scale attacks are notorious for friendly-fire kills. I was no stranger to this as I had seen it with my eyes from my first battlefield in my previous life.
Milos and Ramla's abilities shored up my camp's weakness from another angle.
Large-scale attacks weren't the only ways to deal with a large number of enemies. You can also use Crowd Control (C.C) methods.
Milos and Ramla offered this option to the team if they could control it.
I had Milos train in rapidly growing tough vines and grasses. He also had to learn to control them to bind enemies.
It wasn't easy at first, however, the boy's diligence eventually paid off.
He started from first being able to control one stalk of grass grown by his ability to being able to control a significant number of them.
At this point, he could now control ten grass stalks not grown by his Pangea.
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As for Ramla, I had her train in archery.
The main drawback of her ability was the lack of control.
When I found out she could activate the ability through her mana, I had the idea that if she could infuse her mana into something, she could activate the ability remotely through that object.
I didn't fancy her being a close range fighter due to her physique, so archery just stood out as the best option.
Thanks to Ramla's ability, I witnessed someone break a law of physics from my previous life.
Ramla could make wood discharge electricity!
I still don't know why this was exciting to me.
Anyway, she learnt to infuse a generous amount of mana into a wooden arrow which she would fire at a target. The arrow would then discharge her mana when it hits. The mana would be released in the form of an Electric discharge which would shock every being in the proximity of the arrow.
The radius of the area of effect was dependant on the amount of mana infused into and discharged from the arrow.
Ramla who had never held a bow in her life became a competent 'Shock Archer' after three years of my training.
All members of the team grew significantly within these three years under my tutelage.
I like to believe it was due to my excellent teaching and training methods, however, I can't also ignore the efforts they put in.
This then brought us to the leader of the team herself, Zora.
(To be continued...)