Chapter 351: Crestwall’s Hero I

"It doesn’t matter if they’re weak. Just bring me a few. We’ll need to do a little bit of testing before we proceed forward with any real plans." Roderick said.

The attendant bowed quickly and scurried away into the dark tunnel.

Roderick turned back around and watched the short gamer kid wildly waving his hands at his invisible system screens.

’The sacrifices really weren’t enough,’ Roderick thought bitterly to himself. ’I shouldn’t be expecting too much from this garbage summon. But I really hope this guy isn’t completely useless. We have a lot of monsters at our disposal in the capital. Maybe he can actually be useful.’

He watched the kid laugh to himself.

’Hopefully, he can be useful.’

A few minutes after Claire had left the tent, Adrian was sitting cross-legged on his bed.

He had recovered for the most part. The injuries he took from Draven were entirely superficial, mostly just deep bruising and shallow cuts that hadn’t managed to reach anything vital. He didn’t have any broken bones, and the lingering dull ache in his muscles was completely manageable.

He took a deep breath and looked at the glowing blue screen hovering in front of his face.

It was displaying the final product of what he had been discussing with the system for the past hour.

[Training Method 1: Stationary Meditation.]

[Condition: Host must remain entirely motionless while actively drawing ambient mana into the Draconic Mana Veins.]

[Effect: 200% increase in mana absorption and core refinement speed compared to baseline.]

[Limitation: Fails immediately if the host makes any physical movement.]

[Training Method 2: Rhythmic Kata.]

[Condition: Host must perform isolated, repetitive martial sequences with the staff or chakrams without engaging a live target.]

[Effect: 200% increase in mana absorption while simultaneously building muscle memory.]

[Limitation: Fails if the sequence is interrupted by an outside force.]

[Training Method 3: Live Combat Breathing.]

[Condition: Host must engage in active, unscripted combat with a hostile or challenging opponent.]

[Effect: Variable increase ranging from 200% to 2000% mana absorption and increased mana veins stabilisation speed.]

[Limitation: Effectiveness scales directly with the severity of the threat. The closer the host is to a genuine death match, the higher the multiplier.]

Adrian read through the text a few times.

The third method was crazy. Going from a simple two times multiplier all the way up to twenty times his normal training speed was an insane jump. But of course, it had to be genuine. He couldn’t just spar with a random low-level foot soldier and expect to reap those kinds of returns. He had to fight someone who could actually kill him.

Fighting Draven had made him realize something important.

Why should he just stick with one single training method when he could easily swap between different ones depending on the situation? These three scenarios covered pretty much everything he would normally find himself doing anyway. And the baseline that the system mentioned wasn’t the speed at which others trained at.

It was Adrian’s speed when he used the previous training method where he absorbed mana while moving around and training.

He chuckled to himself and dismissed the screen.

’Let’s try the first one.’ he thought.

He closed his eyes, straightened his posture on the small cot, and started the stationary breathing method. He regulated his breathing, taking long, dragging breaths that pulled the ambient mana directly into his Draconic Mana Veins.

’Luckily I realized my limits at the start of the fight with Draven,’ he mused as the energy flowed through him. ’I swapped over to the older combat breathing method while I was getting my ass kicked instead of trying to stick to my standard training rhythm. Thanks to that beating, I’m right on the edge of a breakthrough.’

This was also one of the reasons why he had not used his better skills. He wanted to see how it’d go if he was pushed to his limits.

He pushed the gathered mana down into his chest.

Not even ten minutes later, a muffled outward explosion of energy erupted from his body.

The heavy canvas flaps of his tent fluttered wildly from the sudden burst of air.

Adrian exhaled a long breath and slowly opened his eyes. He checked his arms and hands. There was no dark, gooey sludge seeping out of his pores like in those fantasy cultivation novels he used to read back on Earth. None of that dramatic stuff.

But there was a ton of sweat.

He was drenched in it, and he smelled like garbage. The impurities his body just burned away while he pushed his knight rank had escaped through his sweat glands, and the stench was genuinely awful.

He got up from the bed and walked over to the tent flap. He peeked outside and just shook his head.

There was obviously no bathtub or running shower anywhere in this camp. Most of his soldiers were currently stinking too. That was just how things worked when you marched an army into a warzone where you couldn’t bring sanitary items. They did have a nearby river they could go to wash themselves, but it was pretty far away.

Adrian hadn’t let them go down there in large groups. It was a massive risk that would just give the enemy a perfect chance to launch an ambush. So they had to go in small, rotating squads, which meant most of the men were just dealing with the grime.

It was a shitty part of going to war, but Adrian was waiting for something specific and he wasn’t going to pack up and leave until he got exactly what he wanted.

He let the tent flap drop closed.

’Yeah, fuck that.’ he thought.

He turned around and raised his hand, and a glowing, oval portal snapped into existence right in the middle of his tent.

He stepped through the portal and the sounds of the camp vanished, replaced instantly by the quiet, pristine air of his underground Oresfall dungeon. He walked straight into his personal quarters, stripped off his ruined clothes, and took a long, hot shower.