Chapter 465: War Goddess

This time, she stepped forward and punched the skeleton directly in its ribcage.

The output that Adrian saw on the screen this time was completely different.

[Attributes increased.]

It was a slight, very minute increase. But it was an actual increase nonetheless. And the more she punched the skeleton, the more the boost kept adding on to itself. For every single punch she landed, it was an additional percentage boost that kept adding onto itself.

The system rapidly calculated it. After around two full minutes of Aria effortlessly punching the regenerating skeleton, Adrian just stared at the final number. It had stopped fluctuating and provided a clear reading.

[For each successful physical hit, Aria Sterling’s attributes increase by 0.5%.]

Looking at this, Adrian raised an eyebrow.

’Wait, by attributes you mean like her speed and everything else?’

[Affirmative. Her reflexes, agility, physical strength, natural defenses, total mana capacity, and even her magic output are increased.]

Looking at this information, Adrian just let out a really long sigh.

’Her whole life she has been fighting as a pure mage. Her whole life she has basically trained and developed a method of fighting from a distance that just does not use her blessing in the slightest.’

He frowned and crossed his arms.

’Wait, isn’t this the exact same fucking ability that the protagonist had in the original novel?’

He thought back to his memory of the book.

’No wait, there are slight differences. For him, he actively had to kill people to gain his boosts. For every person he killed, he got a flat one percent boost to his abilities, and his reset cooldown was an entire hour instead of five minutes. He was a slow ramp-up fighter.’

He looked back at the screen showing Aria jabbing the skeleton.

’For Aria, she just needs to punch people. Or basically just hit them with her legs or hands, and she gets a point five percent increase. The overall increase is half of the protagonist’s buff, but she doesn’t have to actually kill people to get it.’

His hyper-fixated gamer brain started running the numbers.

’Smaller, extremely quick attacks with low power will be ridiculously effective at the start of a fight when it comes to boosting her strength. She can just spam jabs. This can just scale up to be so strong that even though the base strength of each attack might be low, as she just continues to infinitely stack up her attributes, she can get insanely broken in a matter of seconds.’

After getting the information on the second blessing, he completely ignored the depressing first one. A really sleazy, proud smirk grew on his face.

He pulled Aria out of the Dungeon and she landed softly on the grass next to him.

He grinned down at her as Aria looked up.

"Did it go well?" she asked and Adrian nodded firmly.

"Yes. Your first blessing is... well."

He hesitated for a second before making up his mind.

"It’s called Mana core and it increases your mana capacity, output and control."

Aria blinked twice and nodded. She had already expected something like this.

"Mhm... I did have a guess about this but now it’s confirmed hehe."

She stared down at the dirt and thought for a few seconds before she looked back up at him.

"What about the second one? That’s a blessing too right?"

"Yes... and well, the more you hit people physically, the more you get stronger," Adrian explained. "You have a time period of exactly five minutes to hit someone again to keep the stacking buff going. But if you don’t hit anyone for five whole minutes, all your stats go back to normal."

Aria tilted her head.

"Wait, so I just need to hit someone?"

"I think so," Adrian smirked. "But I feel like there is more to this. It will be insanely broken if you can just give me a bunch of playful punches, like thousands of tiny playful punches, right before you jump into a real fight."

Aria chuckled at the visual.

"Yeah, that will be a little funny."

She bounced on her heels.

"Why don’t we just test it out?"

Adrian grinned.

"Yeah, let’s test it out right now."

He immediately opened the portal and sent her right back into the Dungeon to do a bit more testing and the two of them ended up not sleeping for the entire night.

Adrian just walked around the perimeter of the camp like a lone guard. Meanwhile, Aria did all of the testing inside the dungeon. He just sent her messages every once in a while to guide her as he kept a close eye on the information that the system was giving him.

By the time morning finally came around, they had come to a really simple, undeniable conclusion.

Aria’s blessing wasn’t just limited to close-quarters hits like punches, kicks, or headbutts.

Her blessing was basically the exact opposite of Adrian’s Pacifist’s Shackles.

She used his chakrams, themetallic cards, and she also used a wooden staff.

But none of them worked.

Even when she held them in her hands and tried to use them in close-quarters combat, the system didn’t register a single buff. But for some weird reason, her bare fists and legs were the only exception to this rule. Those worked perfectly.

But apart from her fists?

Swords, spears, bows and arrows, crossbows, war hammers, halberds, glaives, pikes, short swords. Every single weapon designed for war worked for her blessing.

On top of that, her range wasn’t just limited to her needing to be in a close ranged combat.

If she used telekinesis on a bunch of swords, those flying swords acted exactly like extensions of her own limbs. The hits registered by those floating blades actually contributed to her stacking buff.

But there was a massive problem with flying swords.

Weight and physics.

Swords were much heavier when compared to thin chakrams. So there was a limit to how many she could effectively control at once.