While Jack was fighting Ronald and Spring Crown on the mound atop the cave's entrance, Arthur was down there fighting the native soldiers.
Arthur's fighting style wasn't like Jack, who relied on speed to move around while fighting a mass of enemies. Arthur mostly stayed at the same spot. He only moved a little when needed, but none of the enemies were able to land a hit.
His katana slashed with lightning speed which knocked any attacks that came and delivered counter slash with equal speed. Each of his slashes was coupled with mana manipulation, thus resulting in high damage.
Arrows and single-target magic that came at him were slashed by his katana, even one from his blind spot.
Some of the soldiers were basic grade. They couldn't last long. When the soldiers saw their comrades start falling, they no longer held back. They instructed the mages to use their AOE spells. Natives had higher HP, if an outworlder and a native were bombarded with the same spell, the outworlder would perish first.
The melee soldiers of special elite grades used their bodies as blockade while the lower-grade soldiers retreated. The AOE spells then started hitting.
Arthur couldn't slash these AOE spells as he did the targeting spells, but his master-level mana sense allowed him to identify the power nodes of these AOE spells when they started forming. He canceled some of these spells by striking those nodes.
However, with so many melee enemies crowding him, he couldn't move freely. Thus, some AOE spells still hit him.
The mages whose AOE spells hit, had some sort of thin red light floating above their heads. These were censure marks. A mark resulted from them hitting Arthur.
Arthur's Avenger class had upgraded to a second-class special class, Avenging Knight. This was a special class bestowed by Princess Aldryth.
The first skill of this special class was Lawful Censure. It was a passive skill. At the first level, the skill marked one enemy who landed a hit on the avenging knight. The marked enemy received 20% more damage from the avenging knight until the end of the battle. If the marked enemy was killed, then the next enemy who hit the avenging knight would get the next mark.
At max level, this skill could target up to five targets and the damage inflicted was 50% more. Arthur was like Domon, he was not accustomed to the game system. So, he had lots of unused free skill points. During the travel, when Arthur was helping Jack with his swordplay, Jack helped Arthur with the game mechanics. Aside from leveling up Arthur's equipment, Jack also gave Arthur pointers on where to distribute his free skill points and free attribute points.
Due to having many free skill points, Arthur could level up his Lawful Censure to level 20. Five mages whose AOE spells had hit Arthur were marked with the red light.
Arthur performed his Crescent Moon Slash, which delivered heavy damage to the melees surrounding him as well as staggering them. He then ran out from the gap between these staggered enemies using a movement art, Immortal Crossing the River.
It was a movement art where the practitioner seemed to move with speed in a straight line but could somehow pass through obstacles along the way as though the practitioner passed these obstacles like a ghost. What Arthur did was perform an extremely fast feint when he got near these obstacles. When the enemy who blocked the way moved reflexively due to his feint, he spun in the other direction without slowing his forward momentum, creating the illusion that he had somehow passed through the blocking enemy's body.
His movement art confused the soldiers who thought that he might be using a skill that made his body intangible. But Arthur didn't simply pass through the soldiers. His katana never stopped moving. His Shadowless Slash struck all those he passed through, dealing damage to them.
No one was able to stop him and he arrived before one of the mages who bore his censure marks.
He slashed his katana using Avenging Knight's level 60 skill, Strike of Enmity. At the first level, this skill dealt 700% physical damage to the target. At max level, it dealt 1500% physical damage. On top of that, the skill also had a 20% chance to deal one random physical status ailment and a 10% chance to deal one random mental status ailment.
After the world tournament where Arthur saw Domon use mana manipulation on game skills, he also started practicing to do it. This Strike of Enmity was one of the skills he had practiced to apply mana manipulation to.
The mage with the censure mark was a level 60 elite. With the mark increasing the damage he received, he wasn't able to survive the Strike of Enmity powered by mana manipulation. He died in one strike.
After killing the mage, Arthur again used Immortal Crossing the River to reach the other mages bearing his censure mark and proceeded to kill them one by one.
With him moving constantly, it was also harder for the mages to hit him with AOE spells even when they ignored hitting their comrades. They ended up causing more damage to their allies rather than to Arthur. When one of these spells hit, they received the censure marks. Arthur could have a maximum of five censure marks. With him taking out the previous mages who bore these marks, new mages who successfully hit him now received the new marks.
In this way, Arthur continued moving around the field taking out the mages with the marks while slashing those he passed through. He drank a healing potion as he moved, recovering some HP that he lost. The soldiers were unable to prevent him from doing that.
Casualties continued to pile up. The native soldiers couldn't believe that they were losing to a single outworlder. Unfortunately, the commander didn't assign a high-level officer to this group. So, they were helpless against this terrifying swordsman.
What they relied on now were the two hundred outworlders at the other entrance of the cave. Those outworlders should be on their way here. They could only endure until those outworlders arrived.
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