Chapter 859: The second day of the evaluation trial (part 12)

The previous was confused by the treasurer with even if minimal, given that he couldn’t notice it, the auburn-haired girl in front of him having the capacity to access the powers of a cultivator, which she used to project a thin defensive layer of spirit energy that repelled the poison.

’Fucking damn it!’, inwardly cursed the treasurer, he hoped to have the enemy poisoned due to putting too much trust into the ability to access spirit energy, but the auburn-haired girl was too cautious.

Which makes sense in the mind of the treasurer too, because he thought that the reason as to why Camila knew about the subject regarding those girls, is because her side had captured someone and made him talk, which wasn’t that far from the truth though, given that James as captured and made to talk originally.

But it is also true that the treasurer wasn’t within the original scope, his participation was discovered by Camila herself because he committed the mistake of talking to himself now that he was "lucky" to have a chance of taking over the survivors of the camp, in other words he was the one who lowered his guard this time.

"You want to kill me when I didn’t even do anything to those women who were also strangers to me, are you kidding me!", shouted the treasurer as he reached into his pockets to then throw four bone needles with each of his hands at Camila, for a total of eight of them.

"Crack!", only for Camila to casually advance though the rain of bone needles which impacted on her brigandine to then... crumble when they landed on her.

’She still has enough damn spirit energy to protect herself like that!’, cursed the treasurer, despite having reached the conclusion that Camila had access to spirit energy.

Given that the auburn-haired girl wasn’t outright flying or using a spirit technique to directly defeat him in a single go, that meant that there must be some limit to how much she can use, or something along the lines of it.

He reached this conclusion, because the poison only fell to the ground instead of sticking or staining Camila’s clothes, if she had used the usual spirit energy protection that even the weakest cultivators have on them basically at all times, then a mere mortal poison like that would have been sent back his way and hit him with strength enough to break his bones.

"I don’t believe you can keep doing that forever!", exclaimed the treasurer as he ran around Camila while throwing bone needle after bone needle at her.

"Crack!", which resulted in them breaking after landing on her brigandine very much to the displease of the enemy, he had made dozens of bone needles given that he fought by throwing them, and hid them in his pockets and other secret compartments in his clothes, but they weren’t infinite at the end of the day.

’Why, why is her defensive layer not faltering after all those impacts!’, he thought as he took yet another eight bone needles which she threw at Camila’s chest.

"Crack!", only for the same result in which the bone needle crumbled when it landed on Camila, while she didn’t even flinch to happen.

That naturally wasn’t caused by Camila using a layer of spirit energy on the brigandine, it was the reinforcement of the copper "oil" which was the mortal version of her copper treasure liquid drops, applied to armor.

Basically, it doubled the aspects of any defensive type equipment as a whole, this included both the leather jackets used for the brigandines and the effect of the shock absorbing steel plaques sewn and glued into them, long story short Camila was super armored right now.

The best part is that this "copper reinforcement" as she called it, didn’t increase the weight nor change the original characteristics of the brigandine, so it didn’t reduce mobility by turning it into rigid armor which is what normally would be done to further increase the defense aspect of armor.

It sounded amazing and it is, because even if mortal as of current, Camila is a princess from the Wolfstein lineage, thus her innate ability is not to trifle with, on the other hand this reinforcement was temporal, and the materials will wear down after receiving it a couple of times, Camila judged a brigandine like the one she was wearing to only be able to endure being reinforced twice, before it became "brittle".

A single application of "copper reinforcement" lasted for ten minutes though, and an enemy that required ten minutes for Camila to beat was not exactly common, so it was a really good ability, especially for something that was used on external things.

Like previously seen, due to mortal limitations, the things through where the innate abilities of even the most notorious members of the camp seem to work with as their base, have their properties drastically reduced when they leave their bodies, such is the case of the little wyrm’s scales for example.

The same would apply to Mira’s nails or Alice’s ones as well as the scales of her tail, if separated from them, they wouldn’t produce a result anywhere close to what they are used for by their respective owners.

The sole exceptions to the previous so far, were Aster and Vivian’s blood, which even out of their bodies didn’t weaken but remained at the same level, in Vivian’s case it had to be properly stored in a bottle and then hermetically sealed, while Aster being the "weird fantasy creature" Mylene considers him to be, results in his blood not drying or losing its qualities even if left in the open for days.

But now, there is another one that should be added to the list, the treasure girl’s three different types of oils, they don’t even need to be spread and applied, just by pouring some drops of it, the thing by itself spreads its properties through the target, in this case the brigandine, a much more advanced function when compared to Vera who could drink poisons and secret them through her hands.

Not to mention that Camila isn’t limited to do so through her hands, neither us nor the enemy saw her touching her brigandine earlier right, the copper oil came from her right shoulder at her order and the brigandine was reinforced before the poison reached her earlier, it was done in fractions of a second, a perfectly efficient ability.

"It can’t fucking be!", shouted the treasurer as he this time took out a short bone knife which he held with his right hand while holding onto one of his last three rounds of bone needles with his left hand.

With a "swoosh", the treasurer threw the bone needles this time at Camila’s face which finally resulted in a difference reaction from the auburn-haired girl who rolled her spear to block them.

"Clang!", the metallic sound produced by couple of the bone needles clashing with the spearhead of Camila’s spear made the enemy who was moving around Camila like before, smile to his insides.

’You finally ran out of spirit energy or are too close to hit the bottom, you are dead now bitch!’, he shouted to his insides as he took out the second of his last three rounds of bone needles and threw them at Camila’s face again making her block them with the spear.

"I’ve got you now...!", the excitement in the face of the enemy as he thrusted his obviously poisoned bone knife at Camila only for her to extend her forearm to get in the way of the incoming stab.

"Clang", first a metallic sound could be heard this time, why, because the enemy had finally managed to make the steel plaques below of the reinforced leather enter in action, that’s right, so far we have only seen the reinforced leather defense and that was enough to make the bone needles crumble when they landed on the brigandine.

"Crack!", as a result, the whole upper part of the bone knife crumbled apart on the spot, leaving only the handle and the first five centimeters of its blade as the result of the clash.

"Thud!", that wasn’t all, being this close, Camila casually used the butt of her spear to hit the enemy in the stomach, making him fall on his knees while he tried to breath but was unable to, because air war forced out of his lungs by the impact.

"Cough!", the treasurer managed to cough in order to be able to breath again with a lot of effort, only for his eyes to become bloodshot as he heard Camila casually saying.

"It’s a shame we have questions for you so I didn’t kill you myself, on the other hand, I’m pretty sure Mina will make it so you would wish that wasn’t the case in a moment".

’That’s a woman’s name, the full armored one at the entrance was also a girl judging by her voice, and she is also a girl, damn it, they might be crazy bitches from one of those female-exclusive forces, and that’s why I was already sentenced to death due to what happened to those girls, I can’t let myself be captured!’, concluded the treasurer.

That being said, he both figuratively and literally had more balls than the camp’s leader, because he wasn’t crippled by blue sky and also because instead of his thoughts leaning towards the idea of taking his own life to prevent suffering, he reached towards his waist where a short object which was wrapped in cloth, rested, that was the last weapon he had on him and was his trump card too.

"I’m not so easy to mess with you damn bitch...", shouted the treasurer as he slashed the five-centimeter metal knife which was wrapped in clothes and was taken in secret by him alongside the poison he used earlier.

"Clang!", only for the sound of metals colliding and sparks to be produced as the five-centimeter metal knife clashed against something.

"No way aghhh!!!", screamed the treasurer, the first part of the scream was due to surprise, why you wonder, well, if the metal knife was stopped by Camila’s brigandine which had proved to have metal plaques integrated into it earlier, then the enemy wouldn’t look as if he had seen a ghost, he would still be full of despair because his last resort attack had failed, but wouldn’t as surprised as he his.

No, what caused his face to pale and his vision to blurry given that he nearly fainted from shock, is that what Camila used to stop his metal knife was... the broken bone knife which escaped his hand when he was brought to his knees by being hit on the stomach by Camila’s spear earlier.

The treasure girl had picked it up and used the unstable and broken thing to not only stop the metal knife of the enemy, but also to slice through its metal blade head on to then cut a though shallow, large wound on the chest of the enemy which is what caused the second part of the scream which was a pained one as he fell backwards.

On his way towards the ground, the enemy saw that there was a silver "glint" to the incomplete blade of the broken bone knife and he cursed to his insides.

’She still had enough damn spirit energy to apply it to a weapon instead of to her armor, damn it!’, he thought only for Camila who could basically read what was in his mind to say.

"Looks like anything which you can’t understand is blamed on the usage of spirit energy, and you call yourself a blacksmith, a normal steel weapon crafted by Aster could cut as easily as that bone knife did through that piece of trash of a metal knife you made without any help and yet for you it seems to be "impossible" to achieve that with a mortal level weapon, pathetic".

The enemy didn’t get an explanation of what was going on, but you do get one, that was "silver reinforcement", in other words that was the result of Camila applying the silver oil reinforcement on the bone knife, with it, she made the edge of the blade sharp and tough enough to block a metal knife and then to cut through the latter’s blade.

Well, Camila did "cheat" a bit there, because she had also applied the copper oil to the bone knife to reinforce its structural integrity, it wasn’t her fault though, the knife was basically destroyed earlier, so if she only used silver reinforcement the blade would remain but the handle will crumble on the spot.

Unlike the copper reinforcement which worked in all the aspects of the equipment in question but in a defensive manner, silver reinforcement was applied to much more specific things, edges, borders, tips, and the like, in other words to the parts of weapons that were designed to increase the damage they can produce, lacerating damage, impact damage, piercing damage and so on.

So, the other aspects of the equipment don’t get affected by the silver oil, in exchange, the effect doesn’t double like with copper reinforcement, but triples instead, so, a sword which’s edges have silver reinforcement applied to it, will be three times as sharper as before, and it won’t lose toughness for it either, the effect is shorter though, around five minutes only, but the equipment doesn’t get as worn down by silver reinforcement as it gets by copper reinforcement, an average weapon could have it applied four times before it became unable to endure it, so at the end of the day, it could be continuously used by the same amount of time as copper reinforcement.

"Mock me all you want bitch, at the end you won’t get what you want...", the enemy who was smirking because he was slashed down by the bone knife which in case you have forgotten was poisoned, had his words stuck in his throat as he was thrown the content of a small bottle at his face by Camila.

"What did you do", the treasurer tried to lash out at Camila, but not only did his body didn’t have any strength, but he couldn’t even raise his voice, symptoms you have seen before already, he was thrown the same poison as the leader would be by Vivian later.

"Just a little safety lock to prevent you from "escaping", as for that trash poison, don’t worry, we have the princess of all toxic related things in our camp, so the chances of you dying because of being struck by a lightning out of the blue are higher than you dying from poisoning right now", said Camila as she cleaned the battlefield, closed the wood container and then tied it together to the body of the semi-immobilized treasurer which Camila then held by his collar as she walked towards the direction where Vivian was stationed.

While the treasure tried to beg for his life at the beginning midway, when he tried to resort to insults to provoke Camila to kill him, he had his mouth sealed by a piece of cloth and a piece of rope.

"Shut up already, save your voice for later, you have a lot of suffering to make up for those girls", casually said the treasure girl, the truth is that she was indeed getting annoyed by the treasurer, because she was thinking on something really important right now.

’With this I can finally work in my unique mission and when I complete it, I can ask Aster for a reward~’, cutely thought Camila.

She had already triggered her unique mission, even before Mylene and Eris did, but couldn’t advance in hers unlike others, that’s because she needed to help "reinforce" equipment for her unique mission.

Which she understood as helping the blacksmiths with their work, but when she did so, in secret from Aster of course, because the treasure girl wanted to surprise him, it didn’t work.

Camila is not a blacksmith and had no experience in forging, but she innately was good with handling materials like the iron ore and the like, even when she consulted Blair, she was directly told that her assistance was quite helpful indeed, so she realized that the problem must have lied elsewhere.

And that mystery was solved recently when she became able to use the active part of her innate ability, of course she wasn’t directly as skilled and effective with it by default when she became able to use it, because it’s the first time Camila does it a mortal level.

So, it took her two days to reach a decent mastery over the two different types of reinforcement and then she became able to use the different ability which corresponded to the last tone of oil, the golden one, she trained in secret because she liked when Aster spoiled her as a reward and contrary to her overly shy self of before, she actively wanted to be intimate with her boyfriend now.

Of course, it was rather innocent intimacy, but this shows how much has the treasure girl changed for the good thanks to her recent experiences, it’s as if she was experiencing a "golden" time of growth.

And speaking of which, while the enemy right now didn’t have the mind to worry about anything besides the horrible tortures that he knew would be used on him, which he realized because of the effect of this poison he was applied to and that he was going to be specifically given an antidote to deal with the poison with which he expected to end his life earlier.

After all, he as an evil spirit blacksmith while not for fun or pleasure, has still purposedly inflicted pain in some of his "materials" to give them the properties he needed for the equipment he was crafting at the time, so he knew what was coming to him... or so he thought, because he hadn’t met a certain wicked red-haired girl, but leaving that aside, those thoughts of despair prevented him from noticing the faint golden glow that appeared on Camila’s brigandine.

That was "golden restoration" and as its name indicates, its effect is different than the copper and silver reinforcement abilities, this one allows Camila to repair the target on which it was applied, well, it would be more accurate to use the word "restore" rather than repair, because Camila has tested it on a piece of steel which was purposedly cut in two to be used separately.

Well, when she used "golden restoration" on it, the thing joined back without any traces of it ever been separated before, no stress marks, no welding marks, nothing, it was as if time itself had been rewound on that piece of steel.

And now, I know that sounds completely not like a mortal level kind of effect, but as incredible as it might sound, among mortal materials there are actually some that repair themselves without the need of being "alive", unlike bones in the human body for example.

Graphene which is a material made of pure carbon atoms organized in a specific way, has the capacity to repair by itself, and if that doesn’t sound incredible to you already, graphene is two hundred times stronger than high strength steel in the same quantity, to give you an example a sheet of graphene weighting less than cat’s whisker could support a cat, and this is a mortal material we are talking about.

The principles behind Camila’s innate abilities weren’t understood completely even by her currently, not to mention that she knew there were other three applications which she was unable to use and that will come alongside with her managing to manifest her lineage trait when she is ready for it.

But for now, the treasure girl had to use her reinforcement abilities on many equipment to complete her unique mission, luckily, she didn’t have to be a burden for the girls of the blacksmith peak nor for Aster because she had her restoration ability to leave said equipment as good as new after doing so.

What’s more, Camila just became an "strategic resource" because she can store her oil out of her body so that it is used by others when needed, it might not be as easily to use for others, as it is for her given that she just needs contact to do so, but still, she truly is a treasure in all the meanings of the word.

"Mm?", speaking of girls who are treasures, a certain white-haired girl saw Camila coming to her side in a rush just as she was about to put the lid back on the large container that had the poison she just turned into a whole bunch of antidote and looked at the auburn-haired girl in confusion.

"Sister Camila, did something happen?", asked Vivian, according to Mina’s plan both Nerissa and Camila would fight their respective opponents before her, so she expected them to have finished and be on their way to the discussed destination with their captives.

"This guy tried to "escape" by getting poison on his wound, so I came here for some antidote", said Camila as she pointed at the enemy.

"Oh, no problem, let’s see, it was the same poison that was in this large container, so we don’t need to make a stronger antidote, you also gave him the poison sister Mylene made right, the one to half-immobilize enemies for easier handling, this way that won’t be accidentally removed as well", said the white-haired girl as she threw a few drops of the watery slightly white antidote into the wound of the enemy, which resulted in a blackish liquid to come out his wound as body expelled the poison alongside some blood.

"Now he won’t die, I administrated just enough to make it not lethal, but that wound is going to hurt a lot more from now and onwards", said Vivian.

"Mmpgh", as a proof of the previous the treasurer let out a muffled pained sound, while his face retorted.

"It serves him right, listen...", Camila proceeded to tell Vivian about the truth of the treasurer, which only made the white-haired girl’s expression to become colder, before the treasure girl bid her farewell and left, you know what happened next.