Although Miss Femis was arrogant and cold, she kept her word.
In less than ten minutes, one of her guards had brought Murphy everything he needed.
A handbook on basic psionic techniques and a handbook on Blood Vulture Swordsmanship.
These were all the young lady's personal belongings, filled with insights she had written down when she was a beginner. Clearly, she herself was the sort of "genius" she'd described.
Besides those, there was also a finely made little pouch containing twenty sets of Blood Eagle family retainer armor, crafted by the finest leatherworkers and tailors in Cadman City.
Though they were lightweight, ordinary leather armor, they still offered quite impressive protection.
At the very least, they were much better than the Witch Hunters' shabby armor. More importantly, they looked great and all matched. The players were sure to love them!
Murphy understood their tastes best.
Weapons had to be big and over-the-top, preferably cool enough to glow.
Armor had to be stylish and revealing, preferably bikinis with fishnet stockings.
He couldn't yet cater to the players' bizarre tastes, but this armor and its matching weapons were all made by skilled craftsmen. Several pieces were even finely crafted, enough to equip them well.
These items were already a cut above ordinary retainer armor. Clearly, the young lady had prepared them in advance for the blood thralls she planned to take in someday.
She'd tossed them out without batting an eye, which proved she was a little rich girl.
It seemed the clan leader knew very well that daughters should be raised with plenty.
Just look at her, then look at himself. The gear the young lady had prepared for her servants was worth enough to buy Triss's rundown manor with ease. Murphy couldn't help feeling a pang of sorrow.
The gap between a reliable elder and an unreliable one had never been clearer.
The unlucky vampire sighed and lamented his lot while casually slinging the psionic travel pack containing the armor and weapons around his waist, all under the guard's disdainful gaze.
"Are you so broke you don't even have your own psionic pack?"
The tall Midnight Walker, clad in blood-red chainmail, sneered under his breath.
"Looks like you and your elder are both disgraces to the clan! Rats from a mud pit. The young lady, who inherited the clan leader's wisdom, certainly knows how to make the most of things."
But Murphy had thick skin and was long used to this sort of mockery. He simply looked the fellow up and down, taking in his flashy chainmail, the sword at his waist, and the coiled bladed whip.
Rubbing his chin, Murphy waited until the guard had finished showing off his arrogant superiority, then snapped his fingers and said:
"Take it off. I'll have that outfit."
"Hm?"
The elite Midnight Hunter's eyes widened.
He took it as a provocation, but just as his fingers touched his sword hilt, he heard Murphy say in a low voice:
"Your esteemed young lady just promised me a set of elite armor to keep me alive. I'm sure an esteemed gentleman like you wouldn't want to see your noble mistress disgraced for breaking her word, would you?
"If you don't want to hand it over, that's fine.
"I'll go ask someone else."
"Shut up!"
The guard clenched his fists at once, the young lady's reputation at stake.
He looked back at Femis.
Without even looking at him, the young lady waved a hand, clearly unconcerned about such a trivial matter.
The guard had no choice but to swallow his anger. Under Murphy's knowing smile, he removed his chainmail, leather undershirt, and weapons and tossed them to Murphy. Then, amid the other elite vampires' snickering whispers, he returned to his mistress with a cold expression.
But Femis clearly had her own way of handling things.
She seemed to have anticipated this. Without a word, she took off her cloak and draped it over her loyal guard.
But because of the difference in their heights, the tall guard had to kneel before the noble young lady could do so.
In the vampires' strictly hierarchical society, such a gift from a superior was the clearest sign of favor. The guard, whom Murphy had just humiliated, immediately puffed up with pride again.
"Such a good dog. Looks like our expressionless rich girl has a knack for training them, too."
Murphy scoffed inwardly.
He didn't take the matter to heart. Why would a mature member of society stoop to quarrel with an immature vampire man-child?
"Maxim!"
He called his loyal servant over and tossed him the chainmail.
Maxim was flustered.
This was elite armor for Midnight Hunters. What had a lowly blood thrall like him done to deserve it?
But Murphy urged him to put it on. He already had Triss's elder armor, tough enough to withstand a Huntress's blessed holy blade. He hadn't taken this gear for himself in the first place.
Murphy valued his own life highly. Especially after fighting Natalie, he'd realized he couldn't afford the risks of a head-on battle.
So unless it was necessary, he'd better not charge recklessly into the fray.
The task of dressing up and making a good impression could be left to someone better suited for it.
"Good! Looking sharp!"
Murphy patted Maxim on the shoulder.
As expected, clothes made the man. Once the white-haired blood thrall, who suffered from albinism, donned the imposing crimson chainmail, he looked fearsome. Add the Midnight Cloak he'd gotten from the young lady, and he could pass for a mighty commander.
"From now on, you're my 'Shadow Warrior.'"
Murphy stretched out an arm and tapped Maxim once on each shoulder, as if bestowing an honor—or making a joke.
"Until we make it safely back to Cadman City, you'll have to learn to play 'Murphy.' It's dangerous, but I believe in you."
"I understand! Lord Murphy, leave everything to me! I won't let you down!"
Maxim thumped his chest and answered loudly.
He was blindly loyal and had the bad habit of worshipping vampires with fanatical devotion, but he wasn't stupid. He immediately understood what Murphy meant. Far from being afraid, he felt honored.
Lord Murphy had already promised to give him the Embrace once they returned. Protecting his elder as a future offspring was only right.
Besides, Maxim had his own motives.
As someone who'd never been valued, he'd watched Murphy's victory in Morland Village from beginning to end. It had convinced him that although Lord Murphy was still at a disadvantage, he'd surely accomplish great things one day.
If Maxim pledged his loyalty now, he'd inevitably share in Murphy's glory someday.
For someone who yearned to make something of himself, this little risk was nothing. What he feared most was being ignored again and spending the rest of his life in hopeless obscurity.
"Come on! Let's spar!"
Murphy beckoned to Maxim, and the two headed toward a patch of wasteland in the distance.
He wanted to test the exact effects of the experience and template-leveling features he'd unlocked earlier. He also needed to make use of the remaining three days to sharpen his skills.
Now that he'd decided to make this "cannon fodder operation" the fifth stage of the new-player tutorial quest, Murphy had resolved to give it his all. The players' equipment was ready. Tomorrow, he'd summon them into the game to discuss tactics. They had to fight a brilliant delaying action.
Besides that, he couldn't let his own strength stagnate. He'd finally unlocked the leveling feature, so he needed to train while he had the chance and prepare for the worst.
If the players failed, he'd have to escape on his own.
As long as the green hills remained, there'd be no shortage of firewood!
This really wasn't because Murphy was afraid of dying.
Mostly, it was because the "King of Cripples" was waiting for him back in Cadman City. If he died, Triss's lifestyle being what it was, that solitary old crippled vampire lady would be all alone with no one to rely on. She'd probably starve to death.
That would be too tragic.
--
Beneath the pitch-black night sky, two figures crossed swords back and forth.
They both wielded the Blood Eagle Clan's standard cup-hilt rapiers, their long, sharp blades whistling through the air and flashing as their wielders attacked and defended.
This was a standard one-handed sword style, all about speed, accuracy, and ruthlessness.
The attacks struck like venomous snakes, the defenses swept back like eagles. Paired with the Blood Eagle Clan's many ways of using blood wings, the style could handle both offense and defense.
At that moment, with the vampires' supernatural Midnight Swiftness boosting him, Murphy's sword was impossible to track in the darkness. But Maxim, his sparring partner, was also very familiar with Blood Vulture Swordsmanship, so he had little trouble keeping up.
In the mainland's martial arts circles, Blood Vulture Swordsmanship was practical but hardly a profound technique. It didn't even incorporate any secrets of psionic power. Still, with a vampire's supernatural physique enhancing it, Murphy could trade blows with a mere blood thrall.
That was proof enough that Murphy's swordplay looked cool but was, in truth, really bad.
It was only an "entry-level" skill. It would be unreasonable to expect anything miraculous from it.
"Crack."
After blocking a strike, the rapier in Murphy's hand was tapped on the shoulder by Maxim's blade, swift as a snake. It meant another defeat.
The unlucky vampire sighed and sheathed his sword in a stylish pose. Maxim looked a little awkward, but still plastered on a smile as he addressed his master:
"Your swordsmanship has improved again, Lord Murphy."
"Why not just say I still have plenty of room to improve? It's not like I can't take a loss."
Murphy rolled his eyes and waved Maxim on, telling his servant to keep practicing. He went to sit beneath a tree and yawned.
His stubborn human sleep schedule still affected him, and he needed more time to adapt to the vampires' strange biological clock.
He glanced at his character card. The "experience bar" at the bottom had risen during their sparring, which excited Murphy.
It turned out you couldn't gain experience just by killing an enemy.
The character card's explanation of the experience bar was very clear.
The "experience bar" merely displayed an individual's strength in a more clearly quantified form. It showed two things: "character level" and "class level."
Character level represented Murphy's understanding and control of his own power at each stage of strength. Class level, on the other hand, represented his degree of mastery in a particular class and its main skills. This was connected to the requirements for advancing along the class tree.
The former represented one's tier of raw power, while the latter was closely tied to the way that power manifested.
So, to "level up," Murphy had to hone his skills in battle and gain a clearer, deeper understanding of his own power.
If Triss were here, there'd be no need to worry. The former vampire elder might be crippled, but guiding a junior would be easy for her. Unfortunately, given the current circumstances, Murphy would have to make up for it in other ways if he wanted to level up quickly.
So he pulled out the swordsmanship handbook Femis had given him and started reading.
The moon was the only light in the pitch-black night. Reading under such dim conditions would have been torture for the eyes, but the structure of a vampire's eyeballs was different from a mortal's, so Murphy was unaffected by the darkness.
As he leafed through the thin handbook, he also thought over his current skills.
There was no need to explain Blood Vulture Swordsmanship. It was the only close-combat technique he'd mastered, and he had to knuckle down and practice it.
From their sparring, he could tell that Maxim made a good training partner at this stage. This family member, who had served the Blood Eagle Clan for three generations, had mastered Blood Vulture Swordsmanship to at least the proficient level.
Jade was truly arrogant. He'd completely failed to see Maxim's potential in this area or how hard he trained, as if his life depended on it. He simply didn't recognize talent.
But that worked out well for Murphy. At least he'd found a treasure.
Besides swordsmanship, Murphy also had some psionic techniques.
The problem with this supernatural power was that it couldn't be improved as quickly as swordsmanship. It was about applying knowledge, like how you could measure a triangle's perimeter with a ruler, but using the Pythagorean theorem would be quicker.
Using brute force to improve psionic techniques was the stupidest method.
After more than a month in this world, Murphy had sorted out the basic knowledge about it in his mind.
He knew that psionic power was a special force that drifted through the world, supposedly originating from the more mysterious astral realm that overlaid the material world. But some theories claimed that psionic power truly came from the more dangerous and less understood subspace.
That was a mysterious region beyond the astral realm. Even the most learned psionic masters understood very little about it.
But most importantly, the world's occult theories had established that a living being's psionic talent was fixed at birth.
No amount of practice over the rest of one's life could raise the limit of one's psionic talent. The only thing one could do was work harder at technique.
It was like a bucket: how much water it could hold was decided when it was made. The only thing that could affect its weight was the state of the water inside it.
Murphy didn't know whether his psionic talent was good or bad, but his marginal status in the family probably gave him a clue.
If he were really a genius, he wouldn't have been assigned two cannon-fodder missions in a row.
The grim reality was almost too much to bear.
This character was basically a lost cause!
Murphy thought that if he didn't have the players as a cheat code, and if he didn't have Triss, a crippled monster girl, at home waiting to be fed, he'd be tempted to delete this character and start over.
He shook his head to calm down, then reread the thin swordsmanship handbook. He didn't skim it; he carefully studied the insights of that family genius, written in the young lady's elegant handwriting.
The young lady's fundamentals were truly solid.
There weren't many words, but her handbook did record several key points about Blood Vulture Swordsmanship, and she'd summarized them in clear, simple language.
This only made Murphy feel worse.
Look at her talent, then look at his.
Sigh. Maybe he should just delete this character and start over?
Just as he was thinking this, a notification appeared on the semi-transparent character card:
By repeatedly reading Femis Cecilia Lasombra's swordsmanship handbook, your Blood Vulture Swordsmanship proficiency has greatly increased. Current level: "Proficient."
Notice!
The handbook's author has mastered Blood Vulture Swordsmanship to the "Expert" level. Therefore, by reading this handbook and practicing, you can raise your swordsmanship to a maximum of "Expert."
Blood Vulture Swordsmanship proficiency has reached "Proficient." One-Handed Sword Mastery talent unlocked! Effect: When using one-handed weapons, your attack speed increases slightly.
Blood Vulture Swordsmanship proficiency has reached "Proficient." Your main class, "Blood Eagle Apprentice," can advance to "Blood Vulture Swordsman." Advance? Yes/No?
"?"
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