Corwin was glad to see this divine trial having a large staircase. The longer it was the more likely it was his adversary would fail. There were 99 steps in this trial. Longer trials were also better as they tended to have more loot. Unfortunately, when Corwin stepped on the first stair, there was no enemy challenger and hence no loot. Instead, a faint pressure emerged, and started to weigh down on Corwin.

Corwin smiled as he resisted the pressure. He was quite familiar with this pressure, and at higher levels it would drain stamina and concentration, two stats where he was surely ahead of his adversary. Corwin nonetheless moved quickly and started to climb stairs rapidly. He wasn’t running or doing anything that would deplete his stamina further, but he maintained a brisk walk in the face of the pressure.

By the 5th stair the pressure had become something that would be quite substantial for someone with only 5 stamina and 5 concentration. On that stair there was a trash-tier magic crystal chest, which when opened contained a single magic crystal.

Corwin was glad for any magic crystal although he missed the higher-tier magic crystal chests of the other trials. The pressure continued to climb, as Corwin reached the 10th,15th and 20th stairs. The 10th and 15th stairs each had a trash-tier magic-crystal chest, increasing Corwin’s total magic crystals to four. The 20th had a common-tier one, and that meant Corwin had six.

Beginning on the 21st stair, sword lights would occasionally come crashing down, forcing Corwin to block or dodge. At each stair up to the 40th, the sword lights got stronger. The pressure continued to remain at the level of the 20th stair. The 25th, 30th, 35th and 40th stairs all had rewards, 3 common-tier magic crystal chests and a bronze-tier magic crystal chest. That brought Corwin’s total crystals to 16.

The next set of stairs had the sword lights get faster and more frequent. Corwin paused on the 45th stair as the chest upped his magic crystal total to 20. He upgraded his main sword four times for 18 crystals. He looked at the new item before equipping it.

Longsword of the Swordsman – Main Hand Weapon.

Divine Tier Growth Item. Currently Silver-Tier Level 12, +48 Str +48Agi +48 Con

Damage 144-168, Durability 96/96 Requirements: 96 Str

Use 20 Magic Crystals to Evolve.

Use 5 trash or better main hand swords to upgrade.

Sword Defense: Add max damage to Def Rating

Anti-Magic Defense: Add min damage to MDef Rating

Firm Grip: Reduce the level of any disarm skill or technique on this weapon by the level of this sword.

Sword of Expert: +0.02 swordsman skill levels/level.

The weapon so far seemed similar to the offhand sword, which was good since Corwin was quite happy with those abilities.

The slight boost in stats didn’t help very much, but the extra base damage was useful in attacking the sword lights. Corwin began to combine a mixture of dodge parry and fighting the sword lights off with skills. He advanced past the 50th, 55th and reached the 60th stair. Two bronze-tier crystal chests later he had 9 crystals again. He was excited when the pattern continued and the 60th stair had an iron-tier magic crystal chest. Inside the iron-tier magic crystal chest were 10 magic crystals, bringing his total to 19. On the 60th stair, the pressure began to increase again, climbing until it would crush someone with 20 stamina by the 79th stair. Corwin happily took his 20 magic crystal rewards, before reaching the 80th stair. The 80th stair had something that made Corwin’s heart leap. A silver-tier magic crystal chest. Corwin hoped for 20 crystals, but there were only 16. Still that brought him to 35 and he upgraded his main-hand weapon once more. The sword gained Sword of speed, improving attack speed with this weapon by 0.01 Tiers/level. This speed was exactly what Corwin needed for what came next.

On the 80th stair the sword lights attacked in pairs. This wasn’t too bad but on the 81st stair they attacked in Triplets. Corwin found this manageable but the pattern was rather scary. On the 85th stair he got another 16 crystals, and upgraded his offhand weapon to gold-tier. The swords still had the same abilities, and Corwin was grateful. Tier was multiplicative, and a Tier of 1.12 in attack speed meant that Corwin had a 12% bonus to agility for attack speed. At his current level of agility, that was nearly 100 points, a substantial difference.

Corwin continued to climb to the 90th stair and got another 16 crystals, bringing his total back to 31. At this point there were 12 simultaneous attacks from each sword light. Corwin was hit once, and his health dropped to 80%. Only 5 hits would be fatal, there wasn’t much margin for error.

Corwin advanced to the next stair, and there were 13 simultaneous attacks. The patterns varied, some of them were easy to deal with. But some of them weren’t. Corwin got hit again, and potioned up from just over 60% health. It’s too soon for that, it won’t last all the way. I need to get better. Corwin used the sword attacks to practice his dodging and slowly got better. He was hit occasionally but not so often that his potions couldn’t keep up. After an hour of practice, he was no longer getting hit. He moved to the next stair, and began to hone his craft again. This time he had reached the limits, the extra sword light had made many of the easy patterns into dangerous ones. Corwin had no choice but to use techniques to dodge, and was still hit occasionally. Under the pressure of the aura, his stamina regen was greatly reduced, and Corwin started to calculate. He was hesitant to train under such circumstances, but it was still too early to activate ‘that’ and race to the end. As such, he had no choice but to practice. He got hit less, and slowly needed to use vanishing steps less often. His stamina drain had levelled off and he was slowly gaining. In an hour, his stamina would recover. The question was could he afford to wait?

Corwin knew the adversary that entered the trial was no ordinary player, he had gotten a glance at his equips and expected that some of them were silver tier. It was risky to wait. But Corwin, had no choice but to accept the risk. He recovered stamina while he practiced, eventually becoming perfect at dodging, parrying and counter-attacking the 14 simultaneous sword lights.

Finally, when his stamina recovered he reached the 93rd stair. It would take Corwin roughly 1 minute to rush through stairs, this meant he could burst from the 93rd stair to the 98th stair using ‘that’ power. If the 99th stair was just a reward stair he’d be fine. But something told him not to do that. Corwin rotated as he dodged and saw a bright glowing red light on the 88th stair. He knew instantly that was where his opponent was. Corwin was impressed, even if the trial difficulty was much easier below level 10, it was shocking anyone could reach this far this early in the game. Corwin was also relieved as seeing where his opponent was meant that he could take his time.

Corwin began to use a mix of getting hit occasionally and vanishing steps to deal with the 15 sword lights. His stamina slowly declined, then stabilized. This time it would take almost 3 hours for his stamina to recover. Corwin accepted the wait and honed his sequences once more, getting to the point where he could handle all the sword lights without using vanishing steps or getting hit. He wanted to improve further and tried to multitask and analyze the sword lights. He understood they were a ranged attack that one could make with a sword, but didn’t know how it worked beyond that. The sword lights continued to be a mystery and Corwin was hit occasionally as he studied them. He had to decide if it was worth using vanishing steps and draining his stamina again to study them further. Ultimately, he decided to focus on the trial and ascended to the 94th stair.

On the 94th stair the sword lights pushed him to the limit. His finely-honed sense of dodging reached a new level, and he began to dodge by the smallest of margins. To an outside observer, it would look like he was hit by the sword lights and yet he wasn’t. Corwin lost track of how much time had passed as he felt on the edge of a breakthrough. Finally, he received an alert.

Passive Movement Technique ‘Precision Dodge’ gained.

Corwin was excited, unlike active techniques passive techniques did not consume stamina and were always active. A technique that improved his dodging was a powerful thing. Corwin tried to find the limits of his technique, and stopped parrying or attacking the sword lights. He managed to dodge all 16 lights repeatedly. While Corwin knew these lights were a life or death situation it felt easy. However, while Corwin made this breakthrough the red dot had reached the 93rd stair.

Corwin felt pressure from his opponent and needed to rush, yet something still warned him not to. He decided not to use air manipulation and continued to advance by his own force of will.

On the 95th stair he received 16 more crystals, bringing his total to 47. He was forced to reintroduce parry, unable to purely dodge. He felt a strong compulsion to study the sword lights, but focused his mind to resist it. He didn’t have time. He advanced to the 96th stair and was forced to use parry, dodge and attacks to resist the sword lights. On the 97th stair he reintroduced vanishing steps. He once again resisted the compulsion to study the sword lights, despite feeling it get substantially stronger.

On the 98th stair, the sword lights vanished an a mysterious chest appeared. Corwin opened the chest and inside was Platemail of the Swordsman. This confused Corwin as he wondered what was on the 99th stair. When Corwin opened the chest, the red light vanished, his adversary had been kicked out of the trial.

Corwin tested the trial, trying to step back down to the 97th stair but this was not allowed. He sighed at losing the opportunity to further improve his skills. He wanted to get good enough at evading to study that sword light. With nowhere else to go, Corwin stepped up to the 99th stair.

The first thing that surprised Corwin was that there was no portal out of the trial. There was no chest either. Instead, on the stone were two powerful ancient arrays, with which Corwin was unfamiliar. As Corwin bent over to study the one closest to him, a powerful sword light fell from the sky and Corwin was forced to leap back. The sword light fell regularly every 15 seconds, without the pressure of dodging Corwin was able to study it.

Hours later, Corwin practiced with his own swords, emitting the faintest wisp of a sword light. He had identified that this was a powerful technique known as Sword Will. He was surprised how difficult it was to learn, despite his obscenely high comprehension. Nonetheless, he slowly had insights. Corwin was concerned that he’d been stuck in the divine trial a long time. In fact, night was almost ending when Corwin could finally emit sword lights. A lovely alert accompanied this moment.

Basic Technique – Single Sword Light Learned

Basic techniques were a level above techniques. This was reflected in their power. Corwin had many great gains from this trial and he had reached a new level of power. He didn’t have much time to reflect, and instead hurried, somehow intuiting what he needed to do.

Right as the sword light fell from the sky into one of the arrays, Corwin executed his own sword light into the other. He was rewarded by the delightful sound of a portal opening. He could finally head back to town.

Corwin Swordborn

Spoiler : Level 10: 25% of level 11

Str: 853(base:25)

Agi: 918 (base:70)

Con: 853 (base:25)

Int: 409 (base:25)

Cha: 409 (base:25)

Lck: 197 (base:5)

Cnc: 197 (base:5)

Sta: 197 (base: 5)

Def: 2071

MDef: 1609

HP:10530/10530 (base: 1000)

MP:6090/6090 (base: 1000)

Gear:

MW: Gold Tier Level 12 Longsword, +96Str +96Agi +96Con

Base Damage: 168-192, Def 192 MDef 168 Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192 Str

OW: Gold Tier Level 12 Shortsword +96Str, +96Agi, +96 Con

Base Damage 120-132, Def 132 MDef 120, Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192 Str

MA: Iron Tier Level 8 Plate, +16 Str, +16 Agi, +16 Con

64Def,32MDef, Durability 48/48, Requirements:36 Str

LA: Silver Tier Level 8 Plate Cuisse, +32Str, +32Agi, +32Con

128Def, 64MDef Durability: 64/64 Requirements: 64 Str

B: Iron Tier Level 6 Plate Gloves +12 Str, +12 Agi, +12Con

48Def,24MDef, Durability 30/30, Requirements: 36Str

G: Gold Tier Level 12 Plate Boots +96Str +106Agi(10 Gemstone) +96Con

384 Def, 384MDef Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192Str

H: Gold Tier Level 12 Helm, +96 Str, +106(10 Gemstone) Agi, +96 Con

384 Def, 384MDef Durability 192/192, Requirements: 192Str

RR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Hidden Attributes (+192 All base attributes, +192 All Hidden Attributes)

LR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Elements (+192 All base attributes,

Ignore 2.4 Levels, Ignore 2.4 Equip Levels

AM: Iron Tier, Level 8 Amulet (+16 All base attributes)

Skills:

Time Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Space Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Air Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 2

Thunder Slash, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Wave Chop, Rare, Tier 0, Level 0

Wind Charge, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Disrupting Blow, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Double Slash, Uncommon, Tier 0, Level 2

Slash, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Pierce, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Parry, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Techniques:

Vanishing Steps, Precision Dodge, Rapid Blow

Basic Techniques:

Single Sword Light