Aside from the torturer Randidly only saw a small slave boy who brought food around every week This food Randidly ignored because it was just slop and stray traces of vegetables His Vitality was nearing 100 and it was more than enough to allow him to continue without sleep or food But he did find himself fantasizing in his spare moments about his favorite dishes from before the change came to Earth
He was a little too hesitant to produce a spear from his ring which he still kept under his tongue but there was a point that Randidly grew tired of just using spells and he began to bring out bracers and Engrave them
Weeks passed and as his Battle Intent was continually brutalized he finally got both the bear and fish Engraving over 60% He even began practicing the new sigils he learned from the Willow Tree Spear Style The animal versions he now had over 40% although not much more than that Meanwhile he made a few attempts at the Shadow Rune but its complexities continued to elude him and even after these weeks of grinding his Meditation wasn’t enough to give him the requisite amount of mana to accomplish the full Engraving in one sitting
Tortured mentally plagued by the vicious Battle Intent powerfully associated with death Randidly continued to grow He repressed his own intent at one point after about a month keeping it from struggling against the invading intent because it was nearing the level of strength it needed to fight back
But he resisted struggling against his mind’s natural instincts to defend itself But he needed more strength before he broke out He needed to grow here So he Meditated Engraved and his Battle Intent grew increasingly dense and viscous All the while time flowed slowly past
Chapter 154
After almost 2 months when Randidly felt rather confident that his own Battle Intent had grown to the point he needed it to he finally made his attempt to escape To his surprise it went extremely successfully When he lashed out with his Battle Intent smashing aside the mental attacks from the young man rather than panic the young man just smiled and took a step back Then he walked away leaving the keys to Randidly’s manacles
Nonplussed Randidly walked out of his jail cell and into the hallway There was even a very convenient path out of the hallway and into the outer world which Randidly quickly took The jail in this strange space was on a high mountain and Randidly was forced to quickly slide down the outside of the mountain to escape There he reached the Badlands as Shal had called it and encountered some new struggles
After all he quickly realized that the castle torture was meant to be possible to escape And below were the powerful spear users who could manage it The hot and dry scrublands with low plants was lousy with spear users constantly fighting against each other and against Randidly if they noticed him
His first fight went probably exactly how it should have gone he was ripped to pieces Afterwards the rather humongous man who had put his spear multiple times through Randidly had scratched his head in confusion What are you doing over on the Northern face of the mountain You are so weak You barely qualify to be in the East wait are you new
Nodding was a struggle with the mangled wreckage of his body but he managed it Then the man laughed and introduced himself as Marco Polo and offered to escort him to the correct location
So Marco Polo basically ignoring Randidly’s confused protests dragged him along on a journey to the Southeastern face of the mountain which Marco believed to be the best place for him The strength was arranged in a circle the strongest were in the West and the weakest in the South with East and then North being transition locations between them
Well we have nothing else to do until our sentences run out Marco would say Why not try and kill each other It gets the blood flowing There’s no sex and no wine here what else is there to life
As Randidly watched Marco effortlessly crush person after person they ran into on the journey he had to admit the man was very skilled with the spear even if he wasn’t very charming or eloquent His huge body vibrated and jiggled with every word he spoke It was hard to remain serious when faced with Marco’s ridiculous comments but Randidly couldn’t help but admire his blunt personality
If you make a mistake why admit it Better to double down insert doubt into the enemy Marco would say That way he might make a costly mistake later and die
Randidly would just roll his eyes but he admired that unashamed attitude It wasn’t something that he could personally manage Ever since he was young Randidly had been very concerned with following rules and remaining reasonable To Marco these actions held no value all that mattered were results and anything you did to achieve them was reasonable
The area around the mountain was huge As they encountered more and more spear users Randidly realized there were probably thousands of people here What was most interesting was their strange attitudes towards each other Initially they were extremely violent and murderous But rather quickly it would be easy to see which in the battle was superior and they would quickly finish the fight and then behave like old friends swapping stories and sharing a meal
Almost wordless during their journey Randidly settled into the role of cook making food for the two spear users Although he wasn’t practicing directly he did learn a lot about fighting with the spear by watching all these fights
By the end of their journey Marco encouraged Randidly to fight and after he did so and lost Marco would step in thoroughly enjoying his superiority After all this area was far too weak for him to be located in
All in all it took almost 4 long weeks of running through the badlands for them to arrive at a level where Randidly stood a chance The biggest reason it took so long was because traveling too close to the prison was inadvisable the guards sometimes patrolled the area immediately around the mountain preparing for people who like Randidly planned to break back into the prison
When they finally reached an area that Randidly could survive in Marco Polo seemed disappointed and vigorously shook Randidly telling him to come visit him Then he ran forward back around the mountain avoiding going through the extremely domineering Western area where Marco would be the one crushed during fights
Randidly had been taking the potion still keeping any notifications from distracting him so he took this opportunity to examine his current status His time in the dungeon had given him great gains in several areas which gave him a sizable amount of PP He put this into the Path of Carnage but it wasn’t enough to reach the next milestone so he settled down to continue his training
The next several months were a bloody time for Randidly Unlike Marco Polo he couldn’t overwhelm the spear users in the area He considered avoiding them but it seemed like Shal wouldn’t want that Rather it was better to fight and train even if it wasn’t in the most efficient manner At the very least it would increase his killing edge making him more decisive in fights
But most of the spear users here had been here for a while and had much higher Skill Levels than Randidly Still Randidly’s stats seemed to be enough to give him a fighting chance Unlike when Marco had fought the fact that Randidly had low skill levels became very apparent to his opponents who seemed to view him with derision for it
But despite that despite the weaknesses in the way he fought Randidly started winning fights He learned to see a chance and seize it He learned to predict his opponent and to use his particularly unique blend of skills to trick and overwhelm opponents In his heart he wanted those victories and as he desired them they began to come to him
The Aether pulsed like a molten heart in his chest catalyzing his growth It was a very beneficial time for him