Special Talent

Shien's boots pounded through the cold, wet mud as he slowly walked through the crowd.

The panel deep within his consciousness kept flipping, and rows of information popped up one after another, rushing down like a waterfall.

The vast majority of the two thousand people in front of me are quite ordinary, with basic skills such as [Lv1 Rough Forging], [Lv1 Basic Carpentry], and [Lv1 Leather Stitching] filling the screen.

The Heretic sent by the Church are all talented individuals, while the sinners sent by this family are merely the lowest-level cogs in a massive industrial Assembly Line.

Even so, these basic skills were enough to support the initial defensive infrastructure of Blackpine Fief.

Even a useless person with no skill bar can be kicked into a trench and made to swing a shovel.

As his gaze swept over the last row of people, a faint buzzing sound suddenly came from the depths of his mind, like a grain of gold dust suddenly mixed into a gray stone.

Shien paused, his gaze shifting to the direction indicated by the prompt.

Several tall, burly men stood in front of him, obscuring most of his figure.

Shien took a step to the side, peering through the gap, and finally saw the person's face clearly.

It was a young boy, excessively thin, his clothes were so tattered they could barely stay on, half his face was covered in Frozen Tundra and mud, and his hair was tangled, making him look like he had just been pulled out of a ditch.

The person was inconspicuous in the crowd, but clutched tightly to the piece of black bread he had just received, as if afraid it would be snatched away.

The panel data appeared faintly on my retina.

[Target: Yarrow]

[Current Grace Value: 25 (Light Green)]

[Currently Accessible Permissions: Basic Panel]

[Skill Library]

LV.1 Skills: Basic stone cutting, rough masonry laying, identification of inferior slag, heavy object carrying techniques...

Among the mediocre gray entries, that dark golden light stood out dazzlingly.

LV.1 Construct Array Intuition (Core Talent)

Shien's gaze fell on that line of text and stopped.

Skills and talents are never the same thing.

Skills like forging, drafting, bricklaying, and stone cutting can be gradually mastered as long as you're willing to invest time and effort in honing them.

Even if you start from a low point, you can climb up from Lv.1 over time, and if you're lucky, you might even reach Lv.3.

That's something ordinary people can gradually achieve on their own.

The talent is different; this skill can't be developed through practice.

It's more like a die that the world throws at you at birth. If it lands on you, you're yours; if it doesn't, no matter how much you struggle in your life, you'll never reach the threshold.

And this boy named Yarrow had such a ridiculously high number on his dice.

With a thought, Shien directly accessed the detailed information about this talent.

On this continent, the Church has virtually monopolized all systematic theories of Rune and enchanting.

Even they are still stuck with an old problem.

Magic Power can dissipate, and the larger the object, the more serious the problem becomes.

Ordinary sturdiness and Rune, when engraved on small items like sword blades, breastplates, and crossbows, are barely usable.

However, problems immediately arise whenever someone tries to apply the entire enchantment circuit to large city walls, siege engines, or even more extravagant heavy war Construct.

The material contains too many impurities and has too large a structure, so the Magic Power cannot flow through the entire segment.

If the beginning and end are not connected, and the loop cannot be closed, no matter how expensive the materials or how complex the array, it will eventually become a pile of useless patterns.

This is why large-scale war machines remain exorbitantly expensive.

Either use tons of Holy Silver and high-level magical materials to pave the way, or hire the best Construct to painstakingly build it up bit by bit.

To put it bluntly, it's about burning money to acquire talent.

But Yarrow's talent led him down a different path.

As the boy grows, he will naturally develop an almost instinctive intuition about the Magic Flow within the structure.

He doesn't need to go through trial and error repeatedly to find the most suitable node for Magic Power to pass through those rough, cheap, and impurity-filled materials.

He might be able to figure out the way to do something that others might not be able to accomplish even with high-level materials, after just a short while.

This means that if this talent can be successfully nurtured, Yarrow may very well become the kind of person who can truly apply Rune to large-scale city defenses and war Construct in the future.

Defensive Dark Bunker tens of meters high, and fortress walls hundreds of meters high.

Heavy steam-powered siege crossbows, and even larger Construct that may appear in the future.

These things, which originally could only be obtained by the Church and the Holy City by spending massive amounts of gold, might actually have a chance to be cobbled together from a bunch of cheap materials in his hands.

Shien watched quietly as the boy, still trembling while clutching the black bread, gradually brightened in his eyes.

Such talent can determine the upper limit of heavy firepower for an entire defensive line!

Without the perspective of the Book of Canon of Grace and Righteousness, someone like Yarrow would most likely go unnoticed by anyone.

He would be thrown into construction sites, mines, and trenches like any other Convicts, forced to carry stones, move soil, bleed, starve, and finally die in some forgotten corner.

But now that Shien has seen it, he can no longer treat him like an ordinary laborer.

Yarrow, who was so thin he looked unrecognizable, was huddled in a sheltered corner by the square.

His hands, covered in purplish-red chilblains, carefully cradled a rough earthenware bowl that was chipped in half.

Only half a spoonful of murky broth remained at the bottom of the bowl, with a small piece of oil floating on the surface that was about to solidify.

For the starving Convicts, this was a lifesaver.

Ke Yarrow didn't even bother to drink; he seemed frozen in place, staring intently at the half-built defensive wall a dozen steps away.

He was so engrossed in watching that he didn't even notice the rim of the bowl tilting, and the scalding soup dripped onto the festering chilblains on the back of his hand without him reacting.

When Shien walked over, he didn't let Ivan chase the people away, but he still disturbed the Refugees who were still licking the bottom of their bowls. He didn't care and just sat down on a log not far from Yarrow.

The young lord also held a bowl of broth made from rough meat, freshly ladled from a large pot, with steam slowly rising from it.

"The soup isn't to your liking?" Shien blew on the oil droplets on the surface of the bowl and asked casually.

The sound entered his ears, Yarrow jolted violently, as if he had suddenly woken up.

He hurriedly turned his head, and when he saw the dark Windbreaker, his face turned pale, his legs went weak, and he knelt down in the mud with a thud, spilling most of the soup in his bowl.

"I was just... just now..."

"Hold your bowl steady," Shien interrupted him. "In Blackpine Fief, wasting a single grain of food deducts ten points."

Yarrow froze, quickly straightening the bowl, his hands trembling violently, not daring to lift his head.

Shien gestured with his chin towards the newly erected low wall. "You've been watching that side the whole time?"

Yarrow swallowed hard; his throat was dry and sore.

He stole a glance at the stone wall hastily piled up by Refugees. He didn't actually have any professional vocabulary in his mind, and could only squeeze out the few colloquial words he had learned in the quarry.

"Sir... that wall is built too tightly."

"Too dead?" Shien glanced at him sideways.

"It's just... not going well." Yarrow became more and more nervous as he spoke, but he couldn't help raising his dirty hand and gesturing in the air.

"Look to your right, the third stone from the top, that big rock, its veins run horizontally, but there's an even heavier one pressing down on it, so the weight is all concentrated on its weakest side."

Shien looked in the direction he pointed, his gaze landing on the stacked boulders.

At first glance, it doesn't seem particularly special, but once you start thinking about it in the context of what Yarrow said, that awkward feeling immediately becomes apparent.

He had replicated the relevant building techniques and could tell that the load-bearing capacity of those stones was indeed problematic.

Shien was now completely certain.

The dark gold [Construct Array Intuition] bar on the system panel is not just for show.

It can not only see Rune and nodes, but this kid can also intuitively judge the direction of force in such a large structure.

Shien stood up and didn't ask any more questions.

He carefully placed the bowl of meat soup, which he had barely touched, onto the log in front of Yarrow.

"You're right, I'll have someone dismantle it and rebuild it tomorrow."

Yarrow was stunned, his eyes widening as if he hadn't understood.

Shien didn't look at him again, turned around and took two steps towards the Inner Fortress, then, as if remembering something, casually uttered:

"Drink the soup clean, then go to the well, wash your face and hands, and come with me to a place."