"Let me!"
The boy's shout rang out across the field, brimming with fighting spirit and excitement.
His pure blond hair seemed to glow in the sunlight. Zanfrui, the young noble descended from the Silver Lake Shield, was already ready for battle. He had stripped off the loose cloak he wore on the road, revealing fine equipment far beyond the reach of other adventurers at his level.
His dark brown leather armor had been custom-made at a high-end smithy in the Imperial Capital through his family's connections. Its main material was supposedly the soft belly hide of a creature called a Mud-Armor Rockbull, which offered decent physical protection without being so heavy that it hindered the wearer's everyday movements. It might not have been enchanted equipment, but its superior materials and craftsmanship put its overall performance far above the cheap gear ordinary adventurers wore.
Of course, raised on his family's traditions, Zanfrui preferred heavy iron armor to the light leather he wore-armor with striking contours that encased the entire body and offered a powerful sense of security.
In many of the oil paintings on the walls of his ancestral home, the forebears of the Wilmot Family wore precisely that kind of heavy armor. Having grown up beneath their gazes, the boy naturally yearned for it.
But his body had yet to be strengthened by transcendent power. If Zanfrui put on such armor now, he probably would not even be able to take a single step, and if he fell, he would never get back up.
His right hand still gripped his one-handed Prism Hammer tightly, but a silvery-white round shield now rested on his left arm.
As the family's third young master, carrying the bloodline of the Silver Lake Shield, how could Zanfrui possibly abandon the Wilmot Family's shield-fighting traditions? Taken