Chapter 116: Granting Power

That very evening, Damian pushed open the door to the room Kellan was supposed to be resting inside and immediately heard the sharp clack of wood cutting through the air.

A training spear shot forward, withdrew and struck again as Kellan twisted his waist behind every thrust.

Sweat had soaked through the teenager’s shirt and plastered his hair against his forehead, yet he continued repeating the same sequence with the sort of obsessive determination that had clearly stopped being healthy several hundred repetitions ago.

Damian remained at the doorway for several seconds, watching Kellan thrust, recover, adjust his footing and attack again before the young man’s exhausted legs finally betrayed him and forced a small stumble.

"...Of course." Damian muttered.

Naturally, the grieving teenager who had been specifically told to rest after losing practically his entire village had interpreted "train responsibly" as "train until your arms fall off."

Tsk, kids of today!

Kellan still hadn’t noticed him, because his attention remained completely fixed upon the imaginary opponent in front of him.

He corrected his footing, tightened both hands around the wooden spear and prepared to continue, but Damian’s eyes narrowed as he casually inspected the boy, then his eyebrows rose.

"Oh?"

Kellan had broken through again, entering Body Tempering level 2.

More importantly, the boy was no longer Classless!

After years of spear training beneath Garrick, surviving the destruction of Otter Village, taking responsibility for the surviving children and continuing to push himself even while grieving, something had finally clicked strongly enough for the Valorian Overworld System to recognize what Garrick had spent years preparing him to become.

Kellan had awakened the Standard Class of Fighter at Level 1!

Damian smiled with genuine satisfaction.

Well now, that made tonight considerably easier.

"Kellan."

The wooden spear froze halfway through another thrust as Kellan spun around so quickly that his exhausted footing nearly sent him stumbling again.

"Lord Damian!"

Damian’s gaze traveled across the sweat-soaked clothes, trembling arms and damp hair sticking to the teenager’s forehead before settling upon the spear still clutched in his hands.

"I thought you were supposed to be resting at this time."

Kellan immediately looked guilty. "I was! I mean... I did rest, Sir. For a while. I just... couldn’t sleep."

That answer erased most of Damian’s mild irritation.

Fair enough.

There were some things a Healing Potion couldn’t fix, and Kellan had experienced enough during the past week that lying quietly in bed with nothing but his thoughts for company was probably the least restful activity available to him.

Damian entered the room and closed the door behind himself.

"Put the spear down and go wash."

Kellan carefully leaned the weapon against the wall before blinking in confusion. "...Wash?"

"Yes, Kellan, wash with soap and water, then come out in clean clothes. It’s time." Damian replied before smiling slightly.

The teenager froze, then his eyes widened.

It was... time?

There was only one thing Damian could possibly mean!

The miracle pills!

Kellan had never been told everything concerning Damian’s methods, but he had seen enough since entering the Baines Noble Family to understand that his new Lord possessed ways of making people stronger which ordinary people could barely imagine.

He had watched the other retainers cultivate, cultivated himself, overheard enough strange comments about pills and witnessed enough impossible events surrounding Damian that even a particularly stupid teenager would have realized something extraordinary was happening.

Not to mention, Damian had promised him power.

Enough power that one day, he would no longer be the helpless boy screaming beside Garrick’s corpse while someone stronger decided whether he lived or died.

The exhaustion disappeared from Kellan’s face so quickly it might as well have been a superpower.

"I’ll be right back!"

He practically flew through the doorway.

Damian watched the door swing behind him and shook his head.

"...That enthusiasm is going to age terribly."

......

Kellan returned so quickly that Damian genuinely questioned whether he had bathed or simply fought a life and death battle with a bucket of water.

His hair was still dripping, his shirt had been dragged over damp skin badly enough that one sleeve remained twisted around his arm, and a thin stream of water ran from behind one ear down the side of his neck.

Damian stared at him speechlessly while Kellan stared back with barely restrained excitement.

"...You said I should hurry."

"I said go wash."

"I washed!"

Damian considered arguing, decided the boy technically met the minimum definition of cleanliness and sighed.

"Fine. Stand there."

Kellan immediately straightened while Damian began slowly pacing around him.

At first the teenager tried following his movement with his eyes, but after realizing Damian expected him to remain still, he faced forward and waited.

Damian did not immediately produce the pills.

Instead, he began explaining what had actually happened inside Moonveil Forest.

Kellan already knew fragments, as practically everyone connected to the Guild knew that the current crisis involved Dark Goblins, Ravelhorn the Reveler and an ancient Fey crossing, but fragments were not enough anymore.

The young man was about to enter that conflict personally.

More importantly, Otter Village had been destroyed because of it.

He deserved to know why.

Damian therefore explained Ravelhorn’s involvement, how Varkas and the Blackroot Dark Goblins had been manipulated, what had happened with the Deep Moon crossing, how Alfaro became involved and why the old White Wolf had attacked despite previously being neutral toward humanity.

He also explained Mirelle and Ravelhorn.

And importantly, Damian did not transform the dead Great Fey into some cartoonishly irredeemable monster simply because doing so would make hatred easier.

Ravelhorn had indeed caused enormous suffering.

He had manipulated people, enthralled Alfaro, empowered chaos throughout Moonveil Forest and ultimately helped create the conditions that allowed Otter Village to burn.

But he had also possessed reasons, history, attachments and grief of his own.

None of that excused what happened.

It simply made the truth more complicated than "an evil fey wanted people dead".

Kellan listened quietly as Damian laid out the chain of events, and by the time he reached the final confrontation, the young Fighter’s expression had shifted repeatedly between hatred, confusion and grim concentration.

Then Damian described Mirelle taking the blow intended for Ravelhorn.

He explained what happened afterward.

Kellan’s face changed.

"He became... a Legend?"

"For several minutes." Damian replied.

Kellan stared at him before slowly asking, "And you... fought him?"

Damian scratched his cheek. "Yeah."

The teenager’s expression gradually emptied as everything connected inside his mind.

The enormous flash over Moonveil Forest, the burning horizon that had turned night into day, and the shockwave powerful enough to rattle Rosewood Town despite the distance.

Everyone had been talking about it since it happened, yet nobody Kellan spoke to knew exactly what caused the explosion.

Now he knew.

"You... did that?"

"Technically Ravelhorn contributed by standing underneath it."

Kellan did not laugh.

His mind had already traveled backward more than a week, when Damian had originally entered Otter Village because of giant feral rats.

Fucking giant rats!

Kellan still remembered how exciting everything had seemed back then.

A mysterious Otherworlder had arrived, weird things were happening around the village, and what looked like a troublesome but manageable monster problem had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the young man’s life.

Barely more than a week later, that same Otherworlder had killed a Legend.

Kellan swallowed.

Was Lord Damian... some reincarnated god?

The thought sounded stupid.

Unfortunately, practically every alternative explanation sounded even stupider.

Damian allowed the teenager enough time to process the revelation before stopping directly in front of him.

"Now you understand what happened."

Kellan nodded slowly.

"Good. Then I’ll ask you one more time. Do you still want revenge for your grandfather?" Damian’s expression became serious.

Kellan’s head snapped upward before thought could interfere with the answer.

"Yes! I want them dead, Master Damian! Ravelhorn is already gone, but those Dark Goblins followed him! They attacked Otter Village, killed Grandpap, killed everyone...!"

His voice cracked near the end, yet Kellan swallowed the emotion and forced himself to continue.

"If you’ll give me the chance, I’ll fight them!"

Damian studied him for several seconds.

The hatred was genuine, and so was the grief.

But underneath both sat the same stubborn young man Garrick had spent years raising, the boy who had obeyed his grandfather’s final command despite desperately wanting to die fighting beside him, then turned around and accepted responsibility for seven younger children before he had even finished mourning.

Damian nodded. "I will."

Kellan froze in joy.

"But I’m warning you before we begin, what I’m about to do will hurt." Damian continued calmly.

The teenager’s determination did not waver. "I don’t care!"

"You should."

"I still accept!"

Damian watched him for another moment before smiling.

"Good."

Kellan would later remember that smile with considerably less enthusiasm.

......

The first stage was almost disappointingly easy.

Damian retrieved ten Qi Nourishing Pills and placed them before Kellan, whose eyes immediately locked onto the unfamiliar medicine.

"Take them."

Kellan looked from the pills to Damian. "All of them?"

"All."

There was no reason to use a Qi Acceleration Pill yet.

Kellan had just awakened his Fighter Class and currently sat at Level 1 with zero out of ten Experience, which meant the first ten fresh Qi Nourishing Pills were enough to carry him directly through the first advancement without worrying about diminished efficiency.

More importantly, doubling things would ruin Damian’s plans for Kellan’s growth.

Kellan swallowed the first pill, then the second.

By the third, his expression had already changed.

Notifications only he could see appeared before his eyes as Experience Points began accumulating through a method that completely violated everything the teenager understood about progression.

The pills continued disappearing until the final threshold arrived.

Kellan suddenly froze, then his face lit up.

"I-I’m Level 2!"

He immediately looked down at himself.

There was no dramatic explosion of power, yet the difference was unmistakable.

His body felt slightly stronger and slightly more complete thanks to his Class passive upgrades, and the Character Sheet in front of him confirmed that something which ordinarily required training, danger or meaningful accomplishment had just happened because he swallowed ten tiny pills.

Kellan looked toward Damian with open amazement.

"This is incredible! I actually leveled up!"

"I know."

"Grandpap trained for years and..."

Kellan’s voice trailed off, the excitement dimming as quickly as it had appeared.

Damian understood exactly why.

Garrick had spent years as a Fighter, eventually becoming Level 7 after serving in the frontier army and surviving enough danger to retire with genuine experience behind him.

His grandson had just crossed an entire Level while standing inside a bedroom.

Damian did not interrupt the comparison because Kellan needed to feel the contrast.

After several seconds, Damian pointed toward him. "You gained a free Attribute Point."

Kellan shook himself out of his thoughts and nodded immediately. "What should I put it into?"

"Nothing."

The answer clearly surprised him.

"...Nothing?"

"Leave every free Attribute Point untouched until you reach Journeyman. I want your natural progression separated from your manual allocations until we’re finished tonight. Once I know exactly where your Class growth leaves you, we’ll decide what to do with the extras." Damian instructed.

Kellan did not fully understand the reasoning, but he had long since decided Damian understood these strange matters better than he did.

"Yes, Lord Damian."

His eyes then drifted toward the remaining pill containers, and the excitement returned.

Getting to Level 2 had taken only ten pills, so how much farther could he go?

Kellan was obviously ready to find out!

Damian smiled pleasantly, then walked toward the weapon rack.

Kellan’s excitement faltered when Damian selected a wooden sword.

The teenager became even more confused when Damian picked up a wooden lance and tossed it toward him.

Kellan caught the weapon automatically.

"...Master Damian?"

"Defend yourself."

Kellan blinked. "What?"

Damian stepped several meters away and raised the wooden sword casually.

The confusion on Kellan’s face quickly became confidence.

After all, he had trained with a spear practically his entire life!

Garrick had corrected his footing, grip, thrusts and sweeps since he was old enough to hold a proper weapon, sometimes by explaining patiently and other times by knocking him over until he stopped repeating the same mistake.

Meanwhile, Lord Damian was a Mage.

An absurd Mage, certainly, one who had somehow killed a Legend, but still a Mage!

Kellan tightened both hands around the wooden lance and settled into a familiar stance.

"If that’s what you want, Lord Damian." Kellan responded heroically.

Damian’s smile widened slightly as he lowered the wooden sword.

"Come, you can make the first strike."

Kellan attacked with his full power, aiming to end the bout quickly and get back to leveling.

Merely five seconds later, he discovered that assumptions were dangerous!