Specialty: Trench Rat's Bite

After taking a quick drink, Lance set down the waterskin, turned, and picked up the iron-bound wooden shield hanging on the wall along with the heavy training sword.

This sword was weighted a third heavier than an ordinary shortsword, meant to better hone his techniques for exerting force.

Among the many basic combat skills, the reason Lance had chosen Castro Swordsmanship at a glance had been very simple.

It was an exceptionally pure sword-and-shield discipline.

It did not pursue flashy killing power. Instead, it placed extreme emphasis on shifting between offense and defense with the shortsword and shield, with only one core purpose: greatly improving the user's chances of survival.

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For someone like Lance, who valued his own life above all else, there was no more suitable introductory swordsmanship.

Lance walked up to the wooden dummy, which had already been hacked full of dents and gouges.

He bent his knees slightly and lowered his center of gravity. His somewhat sluggish left foot stepped half a pace forward, hiding most of his body behind the shield.

The shortsword in his right hand was held behind the side of the shield, its point angled toward the ground.

This was the most standard opening stance of Castro Swordsmanship.

The lowered center of gravity let him root himself to the ground like a nail, making it difficult for him to lose his balance and fall even when struck heavily.

After adjusting his breathing, Lance's gaze sharpened.

His waist muscles exerted force in an instant, like a hard bow suddenly snapping taut, driving his entire body violently forward.

There was no flashy windup to this strike. It was extremely brief, yet explosively powerful.

A sharp whistle of tearing air even sounded through the room.

During his first battle in the forest, he had used this seemingly plain thrust to precisely claim that Goblin's life.

After thrusting, Lance did not pause. He swiftly withdrew his sword and returned to defense.

Then he stomped forward, using the momentum of his charge to slam the thick iron-plated shield viciously into the training dummy before him.

With a dull bang.

He quickly retreated afterward, resumed his stance, and began repeating the entire sequence.

Thrust, shield bash, withdraw sword, return to defense.

He put his full strength into every thrust and every shield slam.

This kind of high-intensity burst drained stamina extremely quickly. An ordinary person would likely be gasping for breath within minutes.

But Lance's unusual physique began to show its effects. The stamina he expended started recovering rapidly within just a few breaths.

Castro Swordsmanship had originally been created for fighting in confined spaces such as dungeon corridors and tunnels.

As a result, this swordsmanship contained very few broad, sweeping slashes.

For one thing, slashing consumed several times more stamina than thrusting. For another, in cramped terrain, a swung sword could easily get caught on walls or be blocked by an enemy.

These simple, vicious thrusts, however, could pierce an enemy's leather armor in an instant with the smallest possible range of motion.

The entire training session passed amid the ceaseless repetition of these mechanical movements.

Such dull, high-pressure training placed an enormous burden on the mind.

Normally, after training continuously for around half an hour, beginners would start losing focus and their movements would become distorted.

But Lance was like a tireless alchemical puppet, maintaining intense concentration from beginning to end.

This, too, was thanks to his special physique.

[Hvergelmir's Boiling Surge] granted him more than just stamina recovery. It also gave him powerful resistance to all abnormal conditions, naturally including mental fatigue and pressure.

Just as the training approached the two-hour mark.

Drenched in sweat, Lance suddenly felt a flash of inspiration cross his mind.

At the instant he thrust, he instinctively made a slight adjustment to the angle at which his wrist exerted force.

The training sword, whose edge had already become somewhat dull, sank deeply into the hard wooden dummy with a wet thunk this time, as though cutting into butter.

It penetrated a full three inches, and even pulling it back out took considerable effort.

Almost simultaneously, a familiar translucent window appeared over his vision.

[Castro Swordsmanship Proficiency +1, LV3→4]

[Constitution +1, Strength +1]

Seeing his attributes increase, Lance was delighted.

Sure enough, as his swordsmanship level rose, the related basic attributes increased as well.

Although Castro Swordsmanship appeared to focus on nimble thrusts, its core force-generating techniques still relied on instantaneous explosive power.

Naturally, this kind of explosive training repeated thousands upon thousands of times produced the most obvious improvements to strength and constitution.

What surprised him, however, was that the notification window did not disappear when his swordsmanship reached the proficient level, LV4. Instead, another line of small text appeared.

[Through countless repetitions, you have completely mastered the secret of twisting the strength of your entire body into a single force in an instant and concentrating it upon the tip of your sword. You have gained the specialty: Trench Rat's Bite]

--

Trench Rat's Bite

Specialty Level: Common

Prerequisite: [Castro Swordsmanship] reaches LV4 (Proficient)

Specialty Effect: All of your swordsmanship thrusts gain an additional 5% physical penetration.

--

Lance stared at the newly appeared entry in surprise.

He had not expected that reaching the proficient level in a skill would condense an additional "specialty."

It made him realize that a large part of a professional's strength in this world was actually centered on the skills they had painstakingly trained.

Even professionals of the same level could likely possess vastly different actual combat strength due to differences in the number and levels of the skills they practiced, as well as the specialties derived from them.

If grinding skills could earn him specialties...

Wouldn't his talent allow him to quickly grind out a batch of practical specialties and strengthen himself in every aspect?

Lance instinctively glanced at [Levin Archery] on his panel.

As long as he also ground this skill up to the proficient level and saw whether it granted a new specialty, he could verify his guess.

Thinking of this, Lance was in an excellent mood after finding another safe and reliable way to improve his strength.

"But this five percent penetration..."

Lance stroked his chin and decided to immediately test what kind of difference this approximate bonus would make.

He took a deep breath, raised the training sword in his hand, and thrust once more at the battered wooden dummy.

This time, he did not simply pursue power. Instead, he carefully felt the feedback from the sword tip as it touched the target.

It felt very different.

He had thought a five percent increase would be negligible, but he had been wrong.

This time, the dull sword still slid smoothly into the training dummy.

"I understand."

Lance withdrew his sword and stood still, a flash of realization appearing in his eyes.

The greatest effect of this five percent enhancement was not actually increased damage, but a tremendous increase in the "stability" of his thrusts.

The greatest drawback of thrusting attacks was that when they struck hard objects, they could easily slip aside or get stuck due to factors such as angle, force, or the curve of an enemy's armor.

That was why Castro Swordsmanship emphasized conserving stamina and using repeated rapid thrusts to ensure armor penetration.