Skill Library Planning

Deep in the Graymist Defense Zone, far from Blackpine Fief, sprawled the ruins of a vast fortress crushed to rubble.

Hundreds upon hundreds of high-tier ghouls stood silently among the broken walls, rusted chainmail hanging from their withered bodies, battered weapons angled toward the ground.

At their head sat an enormous figure.

The Ghoul Commander was wreathed in dense Blood Moon death energy. Great patches of gray, decaying flesh had fallen away, exposing areas already turning to bone.

In his right claw, he held a heavy broken sword, its blade pointing downward. The Holy Silver plating left on its fractured edge still glimmered faintly.

Once a weapon for slaying darkness, it had become an instrument of torture. Holy Silver burned his mutated flesh without cease, and a faint sizzling hiss rose from his palm.

Still, he gripped the hilt as though his life depended on it. It was the last scrap of human memory in his desiccated soul.

Just then, at the far edge of the horizon, a rift opened in the night.

A faint but pure pillar of platinum light shot upward, like a sword thrust backward through the crimson clouds of the Blood Moon.

The Ghoul Commander slowly raised his head, his movements stiff.

"The Sacred Flame... has been lit again..."

The ghoul had spoken. Beneath his rasp lay a sorrow almost too faint to hear.

Three full days had passed since that brutal battle of flesh and blood.

In any other Long Night Fief, the moment the danger receded by even an inch, whips would drive the condemned back to hauling boulders and repairing the walls.

But the camp here was strangely quiet.

Aside from the bare minimum of perimeter patrols and checks on the Sacred Flame's base, Shien had issued only one order: three days of rest for everyone.

Soldiers and condemned alike lay sprawled beside the campfires, wrapped in bloodstained blankets and sleeping without a care. Heavy snores rose and fell around them.

Over those three days, the brilliant deep-blue Grace Value above the camp had settled into the stillness of a frozen sea.

The soldiers could sleep soundly. Shien could not.

The backlash from pushing himself to the limit for two nights still gripped him, but he had forced himself to sleep for only one day and night.

As soon as the dizziness eased, he pulled on his coat and sat before the makeshift desk assembled from broken crates inside his tent.

Before Blood Moon Season arrived, this wasteland of Blackpine Fief had to become a fortress of grinding blades, armed with steel, gears, and Poisonfire.

But before construction of that war machine could begin in earnest, he had to take stock of what he had gained and make plans.

Shien glanced toward the gap in the tent flap. Ivan's tower-like silhouette stood guard there.

Certain he would not be disturbed, Shien looked away, slowly lowered his eyelids, and leaned his tense back against the wooden chair. The Canon of Grace and Righteousness opened silently.

Reward Value: 8732.

It was a vast fortune, forged for him by the hundreds of Blackpine Fief's battered survivors.

Shien scanned the costs of copying skills.

A basic Lv.1 skill cost 200 points, an advanced Lv.2 skill 600, and a Lv.3 skill a full 1,800.

Any young knight hungry for power would likely have gone into a frenzy, buying Battle Aura and sword techniques capable of splitting mountains and shattering stone.

Shien looked at the fortune without a trace of greed. Instead, an image flashed through his mind.

Fabien, the church swordsman who had spent years in the Resonance Realm, had not lasted even a second against the Tier Three Mutant Giant Rat's tail swipe.

He had flown away like a rag sack, his breastplate shattered, and hit the ground coughing blood.

Even if I push my swordsmanship and Battle Aura into the Resonance Realm, how many monsters could I kill during the real Blood Moon Season? Shien calculated coolly. At best, I'd survive a few more minutes inside the meat grinder.

He was a lord. Fighting prowess mattered, but it was not what he needed most urgently.

Shien turned his attention to several master craftsmen in the camp and to Victor, the one-armed old man.

Copy Victor's [Lv.3 Alchemy of Architectural Constructs] and Mack's [Lv.2 Giant Defensive Fortification Construction].

His Reward Value instantly fell by 2,400 points.

The next moment, a violent change swept through his mind, and the pages of the Canon of Grace and Righteousness burst with brilliant blue light.

A vast flood of information rushed through his nerves. The rough experience stored in the minds of Mack and Victor was forced into him.

Methods of laying stone, the proportions for mixing demonic beast bone and blood into wall-building mortar, the instincts needed to dig defensive tunnels—all unfolded rapidly in his mind.

At the same time, another set of dormant memories awakened.

The illustrated architecture books on the shelves in his previous life, popular science books, and the miscellany he had leafed through to pass the time.

Those long-blurred fragments were drawn out with precision by the Canon's power.

Two utterly different bodies of knowledge rapidly fused in Shien's mind.

Stable triangular structures and basic load-bearing mechanics, basic cement mixes... Even modern trench designs for protection against artillery and interlocking fields of fire from projecting sections of a wall began to merge, through furious mental calculation, with the chevaux-de-frise and ditches of this other world.

Shien slowly exhaled, unable to contain the excitement swelling in his chest.

It was an unexpected gift. The Canon of Grace and Righteousness did more than copy skills; it could complete them using knowledge from his previous life.

The craftsmen of this world stacked stones according to experience handed down through generations. They knew what worked, but rarely why.

When Shien copied those skills, however, the Canon searched his memories for the scientific principles behind them, then fused the two together.

It was an overwhelming advantage brought from Earth.

It meant Shien would possess something the entire Blood Moon world had never known: a system for building on the wasteland grounded in modern engineering.

His burst of excitement passed quickly. Shien steadied himself and moved on.

Those two nights of painstaking control had shown him the limits of low-level skills.

Maintaining [Lv.2 Battle Formation Command Logic] and [Lv.2 Basic Battlefield Awareness] at the same time was like trying to count every grain of sand in a sandstorm with the naked eye.

He had forced his brain to run like an overclocked surveillance system. The price was nerve pain that had nearly driven him to collapse.

If he kept that up through the sixty days of Blood Moon Season, his brain would burn out before any demonic beast breached the walls. He had to escape such wasteful exertion.

The underlying workings of the Canon of Grace and Righteousness were not a rigid list.

When the principles of two skills complemented each other closely enough, Reward Value could serve as a furnace, breaking them down and recasting them into a higher-order ability.

Shien fixed his will on the skill nodes.

He spent 1,800 Reward Value. In his mind, the two clusters of light representing perception and command slammed together.

Breakthrough!

[Upgrade complete: Obtained Lv.3 Macro Battlefield Command]

An invisible ripple spread through the depths of his mind. Shien slowly breathed out.

From that moment, the ruins of Blackpine Fief became a precise, three-dimensional sand table in his mind.

At last, he was free of the limits of his eyes. He had truly taken the player's seat at the board.

His tech tree had changed. Shien quickly reviewed the main skills on his status panel.

Combat: Lv.2 Short-Term Battle Aura Burst.

Command: Lv.3 Macro Battlefield Command.

Logistics and technology: Lv.3 Alchemy of Architectural Construct Studies, Lv.2 Aberrant Material Smelting, Lv.2 Alchemy of Materials, Lv.2 Giant Defensive Fortification Construction.

Spent on upgrades: 4,200 points. Reward Value remaining: 4,532.

Looking at his remaining reserve of more than four thousand points, Shien forced down the urge to buy more.

Running out of last-resort options was the same as putting one foot in the grave.

He had to keep those points.

Some were for saving his life. Blood Moon Season lasted more than sixty days, and a High-Tier Demonic Beast could appear at any time.

He needed to reserve at least two thousand points for an emergency purchase. The right skill at the right moment could save his life.

The rest was for Bishop Castian and the reinforcements from the Lineage. He would see whether they brought anyone with unusual talents.

With his skill library settled, Shien opened his eyes. It was time for the next step.

Shien stood and swept aside the heavy canvas tent flap. "Bring every craftsman to the square."