The commanders had all come out in force, filling Damon’s quarters. Damon had expected as much, but he put on a deliberately surprised expression.
“What? What brings you here?”
The uninvited guests stared at Damon without a word. Disappointingly, however, Damon held nothing in his hands. The dish they had been anticipating so much was nowhere to be seen.
‘Strange.’
With a troubled expression, Marquis Hausen cautiously opened his mouth.
“I heard you took some beef from the supply depot. Did you, by any chance, make a dish with it?”
“Oh, that?”
As if something had just occurred to him, Damon clapped his hands.
“There’s a puppy at the carpentry workshop that I’ve taken quite a liking to. So I stopped by the supply depot to get it some food. I was only thinking of getting a bit of offal the soldiers wouldn’t eat, but wouldn’t you know it, they gave me veal instead. I wondered if it had gone bad, so I just took it and fed it to the puppy. In any case, that little fellow must have eaten his fill today.”
Damon answered calmly. Upon hearing his reply, Marquis Hausen’s eyebrows twisted into a deep frown.
“You… you gave such precious meat to a mere dog?”
“The supply soldier handed it over without saying a word. I thought it was something the soldiers couldn’t eat, so I fed it to the puppy. Is there a problem?”
“N-no, not exactly.”
Disappointment passed plainly over the faces of the uninvited guests, Marquis Hausen foremost among them. They had rushed over expecting a splendid dinner, only for their hopes to be cruelly dashed. They tried not to show it, but sighs escaped them despite themselves.
“I see. Very well.”
The commanders, led by the marquis, turned away with their shoulders drooping weakly. Now that they knew the circumstances, there was no need to remain here any longer. Marquis Hausen in particular could not suppress his rage toward the culprit Damon had mentioned—the innocent(?) puppy.
‘Damn it. Tomorrow I’ll have the soldiers get rid of that mutt.’
Damon merely watched their retreating backs with a faint smile, unaware of the fate of the poor puppy that would lose its life because of his lie.
“Eit!”
At the same time as the sharp shout, a sound rang out as if something had exploded. It came in rapid succession, like a leather drum bursting.
Thud, thud, thud—crack!
Along with the sound of something breaking, an irritated sigh burst out.
“Again? Damn it! That makes seven in just two days.”
The one walking away in frustration was Damon. In front of him, a wooden doll whose lower body had been completely shattered hung limply. The torso of the wooden doll was riddled with holes—so thoroughly that not a single intact spot remained. What was unusual was that every hole had been pierced precisely where the acupoints of the human body would be. Perhaps because the force had been consistent, most of the holes were of uniform depth.
Beside the broken wooden doll hung others that appeared relatively intact, suspended by ropes. They dangled like swings, but because the wind was blowing fiercely, the dolls swayed violently. The sight of human-shaped wooden dolls swaying back and forth in the wind was almost grotesque at first glance, especially with their limbs flailing about like those of real people. Looking at the useless doll, Damon shook his head.
“Even though I minimized the power of Magic Missile as much as possible, it still can’t withstand it…”
Put another way, that showed just how immersed he had been in training all this time. The first ten dolls completed at his request to Carpenter had long since become unusable. The dolls Damon was currently using for training were the ones he had obtained after presenting his third dish. But even the ten wooden dolls from the third batch had all been broken apart, and now only three remained.
“I’ll have to meet Carpenter once more soon.”
Shaking his head, Damon resumed his training without delay.
He ran toward one of the dolls while drawing in mana—selecting only the mana that possessed the attribute of wind, so that he could deploy Magic Missile. By now, he had reached the point where he could naturally gather mana even while running. The fact that mana of the wind attribute was somewhat fluid played a part, but it also proved how thoroughly he had trained during this time. Damon furrowed his brow.
“If I used Haste alongside it, the training would be even more effective…”
But Haste was not a spell to be abused. It sharply increased the body’s reflexes and explosive power, but in exchange, one had to be prepared for a significant reduction in lifespan. Because of that, Doyle never cast Haste on Damon unless they were entering battle. As the price for using Haste thus far, Damon had already gained several wrinkles on his forehead. Of course, if he continued using this method in the future, there was a high chance that Damon’s lifespan would be drastically shortened.
“It doesn’t matter. If I don’t use it, I’ll die on the battlefield anyway…”
But Damon gave no thought to what would come afterward. He was staking his life on only one thing: becoming stronger.
As he sprinted with all his strength, the swaying doll hanging from the rope rapidly drew closer. From this moment on, it was no longer a doll, but an enemy Damon had to face. As the enemy’s form approached, Damon cleared his thoughts and prepared to rearrange his mana. A Magic Missile had already formed on the magic staff, giving off light.
“Eit!”
With a shout, he swung the staff, and the Magic Missile shot toward the doll like an arrow. It struck precisely at the outer corner of the doll’s eye.
Thud.
Though the doll was swaying violently, there was not the slightest error. Tiny splinters of wood scattered, and the spot that would correspond to Tongziliao in a human body was gouged out. Tongziliao was a vital point on the gallbladder meridian, a fatal acupoint located roughly one to two centimeters beside the outer corner of the eye. As a key point of the facial nerve, it was a vital point among vital points; if struck directly, a person would lose consciousness on the spot. Of course, since this was a wooden doll, it did not faint, but the impact sent it helplessly bouncing in the opposite direction.
Before anyone knew when he had moved, Damon had already positioned himself in that direction. Another Magic Missile blazed brilliantly.
Boom.
A hole was unerringly pierced through Dazhui, located on the back below the nape of the neck. This was the place where the hand and foot three yang meridians and the Du meridian gathered, so if it had been a human, the damage would certainly have been tremendous. Damon did not stop there and continued attacking the wooden doll’s vital points.
As Magic Missiles were deployed, important acupoints such as Jianjing, Jingmen, Yifeng, and Danzhong were destroyed one after another. The doll was moving wildly under the repeated blows, but Damon’s Magic Missiles struck their intended acupoints without the slightest deviation. Even while moving at high speed, his magic unfolded as naturally as flowing water and with extreme precision. From this alone, one could easily tell the extent of Damon’s training.
Damon’s attacks, grounded in long years of real combat experience, could truly be called animalistic movements. Like a flying tiger, he slipped into the blind spots of the doll as it rebounded from each impact, and whenever a vital point was revealed for even a moment, a Magic Missile exploded there without fail.
Of course, if he used the Power Up Gauntlet together with his magic, the training effect would be far greater, but there was no way to do that for now. A direct strike was still more powerful than Magic Missile, and a wooden doll of this sort would surely be reduced to powder in a single blow…
Crack.
The wooden doll, struck continuously by Magic Missiles, finally could not endure any longer and shattered to pieces. As it collapsed, spilling wood fragments everywhere, there was not a single intact spot left on its body.
“Whew! This is exhausting.”
After taking a long, deep breath to steady himself, Damon lowered his head. In his right hand was the magic staff he had borrowed from his master. It was a magic staff that had deepened with age after long years at Doyle’s side. But Damon’s thoughts about the staff were somewhat different.
“If only it were a little shorter… No, could I use just the crystal orb without the staff?”
At that moment, a quiet voice came from behind Damon.
“That would probably be difficult. Since the staff serves as the central axis for driving mana, the shorter its length, the less mana can gather.”
“Master, you’re here?”
Unaware that Doyle had come so close, Damon was startled and turned his head. He had never imagined that his master, Doyle, had slipped past his senses and was observing him from nearby. There stood Doyle, watching Damon’s training with a satisfied smile.
Though he had lost his martial arts, the senses he had honed on the battlefield remained intact, so Damon kept tilting his head in puzzlement. An ordinary person could never have evaded his senses. Judging from the way the morning dew had settled damply, Doyle had clearly been observing him for quite some time.
“How did you… Ah, I see.”
Sensing the faint aura of magic emanating from Doyle’s body, Damon nodded. If magic was used, it was possible to approach without him noticing.
“You’ve improved greatly.”
Doyle smiled warmly and approached Damon. Even at a glance, it was clear that Damon had trained all night long. A disciple who devoted himself to training of his own accord, even without his master’s instruction—if a master did not feel pleased by such a disciple, it would surely be a lie.
As if to hide that feeling, Doyle shook his head and looked at Damon.
“You need to prepare to leave, so end your training here.”
“L-leave?”
“A deployment order has come down. Judging from the situation, it seems not only the Eighth Corps but all the nearby corps have been summoned.”
Damon tilted his head.
“I’m not sure. The war situation doesn’t seem that urgent…”
After Damon began full-fledged training with Magic Missile, the Eighth Corps to which he belonged fought two more battles. Of course, since the orc forces that attacked were relatively small in number, the commander, Marquis Hausen, was able to secure victory without much difficulty. Needless to say, Damon also fought as Doyle’s guard.
However, because the level of the magic he had trained in was not yet sufficient for practical use in battle, Damon had supported Doyle using only Haste and the Power Up Gauntlet as before. In doing so, he had achieved the considerable feat of taking down three ogres and five trolls. As if seeking confirmation, Damon asked again.
“All the corps have been summoned?”
In his view, the war situation had been nothing but calm. For that reason, he could not help but feel puzzled by the sudden summoning order.