The Gamer's POV-Chapter 237: Plans for the Next Grade [2]

The meeting continued for a while. After Argentos was done speaking, Aurora took over from him.

She took a long look at the fear-stricken cadets. Despite the lingering traces of dread visible on her own face, she began speaking words of encouragement to the crowd. She spoke of their strength as a unit and the necessity of their mission if they ever wanted to see their own world... or their families again.

When she was finished, the expressions on the faces of the cadets shifted. Their countenances brightened a bit, showing that she had been able to rekindle a spark of hope in them.

Even the expression on her own face brightened as she saw her words take hold. It was an imperceptible change at first, but the heavy atmosphere in the room began to lift.

Cedric watched her and realized that she wasn’t just doing this for the others. She was doing it to convince herself that they stood a chance. In a place where the ground itself could wake up and swallow them, hope was the only thing keeping their legs from giving out.

...A moment later, the meeting eventually came to an end with the conclusion that the cadets would be setting out for Bhujanga-Dwipa in a week’s time.

After that, the cadets in the chamber retreated to their parties to train even more.

As for Cedric, he had no plans of training today because he had other important plans. He had done a fair job of training his combat skills these past weeks and so, with just a week left to prepare, it was time to move on to the next thing.

Together with Aika, he went up to the roof of the keep, which was now their favorite place in this city. They sat on the roof with their backs against each other and, for the remainder of the day, they drew in mana to expand Cedric’s mana core.

It was important to note that since the city was always in perpetual darkness, this meant that it was Cedric’s natural element. And so, they had been utilizing this to grow his core. Especially Aika, who would always absorb mana from the element at every little chance she got.

That aside, when night eventually came, although there were no visual cues, they could tell because they had a screen by the side displaying the time. Looking at the time, Cedric exhaled slowly, feeling quite refreshed, a bit confident, and mentally stable.

More importantly, he was ready to leave.

***

One habit Cedric had always had was that he was a chronic over-thinker. His head was always filled with questions. Questions of how to improve, questions of how to increase their chances of success from a zero to at least a five, and so on. The good thing about this, though, was that it helped him plan and prepare for the unknown.

Now, to be honest, Cedric knew that the chances of the cadets actually winning against the lords were very slim. It was common knowledge that as the grades increased, the gap in power between them widened significantly. And unfortunately for them, the lords were two whole grades above them.

Would they be able to win if dozens of cadets ganged up on one lord? Maybe. They had been training their skills over the past weeks, and by now many must have already maxed out the level of their exclusive skills. But then, would they be able to win against the leader of the lords?

When Cedric thought about it, he concluded that at this stage, the answer was a solid no.

The reason for this conclusion was that, at the moment, the leader of the lords was able to wield his flames of decay.

Cedric suspected that maybe the man had some kind of copy ability, and that he had used that to copy his flames of decay.

Now that... was a real problem.

Cedric knew just how devastating his flames of decay were. Now, imagine that power in the hands of a being two grades above him. Just the thought made him shudder. Of course, he wasn’t worrying about himself. He was immune to those flames. But what about others? What about the grade two cadets who would try to fight that lord?

The possibility that many, if not all of them, would decay was very high. Because of this, Cedric, after overthinking, realized he could not allow just any cadet to fight this lord. He needed to make sure that only the few strongest among them in both level and power would approach this leader.

But more than that, Cedric made up his mind a long time ago that he would need to advance to grade three before even journeying to Bhujanga-Dwipa.

Luckily, he was just two thousand EXP away from achieving this goal, and so, he planned to leave for the Stone-Crag Wastes tonight.

But... he wasn’t planning on going alone. He was planning on taking his sister with him.

He turned to his left where the screens displaying the stats of his party members were active, then he looked at the one displaying his sister’s stats.

~~~~~~ Character Profile ~~~~~~

Character Name: [Celeste Anele Martini]

Age: [16]

Level: [20]

Grade: [2]

Element: [Fire]

Class: [Warrior]

Class Attribute: [Berserker]

Bond Name: [Lilith]

Bonded Ability: [Queen after Death]

Exclusive Skills: [Demon Queen’s Chains - Lv10]—>[Conditions not met], [Thou shall not die - Lv10]—>[Conditions not met]

EXP: [9100/10,000]

~~~~~~ ============== ~~~~~~

’She’s really close to evolving, so I might as well bring her along,’ Cedric thought as he stared at the screen.

He needed her to also evolve to the next grade before they left because, truth be told, Celeste was a really powerful Dominant. With her ability, "Thou Shall Not Die," and her insane attribute to temporarily level up while angry, she was perfect to be one of those who would stand by his side when challenging the leader of the lords.

After a few seconds, Cedric turned away from her screen to the other screens.

He could see that Dion and Evelyn were at level 18 while Audrey was at level 19. So their evolution was still a mile away.

As for Leon...

~~~~~~ Character Profile ~~~~~~

Character Name: [Leon Von Caprio]

Age: [19]

Level: [21]

Grade: [3]

Element: [Light]

Class: [Knight]

Exclusive Class Attribute: [Master of Arms]

Bond Name: [Uriel Avelini]

Bonded Ability: [All-Seeing Eye]

Exclusive Skills: [Judgement time - Lv10], [Mother’s Protection - Lv8], [Ten knights of Retribution - Lv1] 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

EXP: [2,300/10,000]

~~~~~~ ============== ~~~~~~