Chapter 219: The Heroic Spirit Is Shocked by Your Shamelessness

Chapter 219: Chapter 219: The Heroic Spirit Is Shocked by Your Shamelessness

In the days that followed,

As a Gun Spirit who had once followed two Legendary Dominators,

Ascalon felt its understanding of the world being challenged every single day.

The resilience this young man named Lance displayed in his Martial Arts training was frankly terrifying.

Not only could he swing a heavy spear day and night like a tireless Titan,

but in just a few short days, he had forcibly raised a completely unfamiliar set of Long-Handled Weapon Combat Techniques from the awkward beginner stage to the pinnacle of mastery.

Most frightening of all, he had somehow managed to forcibly materialize a Combat Specialization with tangible effects within the Star Realm.

Such an absurd level of aptitude would have absolutely made the jaws of even those legendary Heroes drop, even back in the golden age when stars shone brightly.

The implications were self-evident.

However, aside from being dumbfounded by his monstrous Talent, what truly shattered Ascalon’s worldview was the way the young man was completing his trial.

The Star Realm had given the will of the Treasure the ability to perceive the trial’s progress.

This was also why Ascalon found it so unbelievable.

As the trial progressed, Lance was steadily approaching the target destination: King’s Canyon.

But in the process, the methods he used to accumulate reputation were something it had never seen or heard of in its several hundred years of existence.

For example, when passing through a remote village that was accustomed to setting up roadblocks on mountain paths to extort passing merchant caravans,

Lance didn’t try to persuade or enlighten the villagers like a traditional Trial Taker.

He charged straight into a nearby Demon nest with his spear and beat the ferocious Demons into complete submission.

Then, he brought this pack of Demons to the village entrance, declared he would protect the villagers from Demon attacks, and, in a cruder "dog-eat-dog" fashion, forcibly levied a hefty protection fee per head from the village that had originally survived on extortion.

This should have been a vile act that went against the righteous intentions of the trial.

But somehow, this behavior was actually acknowledged by the Star Realm Law!

Absurd incidents like this happened with ridiculous frequency along the trial path.

Things like using the justification of "protecting a crooked merchant from being beaten to death on the spot by angry villagers" to extort a huge reward from said merchant, then returning the swindled Silver Coins to the villagers and taking the rest.

Or, upon encountering a group of local thugs bullying someone,

he would step right up, beat the thugs to the ground, and then, using the excuse of "protecting you from having your legs broken," force them to repair houses and build pigsties for the town’s poor, free of charge.

Along the way, Lance’s life was far too comfortable.

The most tired he ever got was probably when he was alone late at night, practicing his spearplay until he was dripping with sweat.

In any case, after spending this time together,

Ascalon had never seen the slightest sign of the spiritual struggle that a Trial Taker was supposed to have.

As for the requirement to spread his name,

it was completely fulfilled within the first week of the trial by this young man who went around extorting everyone under the banner of "equivalent protection."

Even...

「At this moment.」

Lance, who had already become famous across the continent for his various bizarre deeds and earned the title "the Despicable Foreigner,"

was lying comfortably inside a spacious carriage that some black-hearted rich merchant along the way had "voluntarily" provided.

The carriage was lined with an expensive velvet carpet.

Lance had his legs crossed, leisurely tossing sweet candied fruits into his mouth one by one while watching the constantly updating information on the blue, translucent panel that only he could see.

[Detected that the Lord of Redwood Town feels "Fear," "Hatred," "Anger," and "Profound Awe of Your Martial Prowess" toward you.]

[These negative emotions have been successfully converted into a General Concept Reputation base!]

[Congratulations! You have obtained General Concept Reputation Value +150!]

[Current Trial Progress: 4700/1000]

(Note: You are being closely watched by Heroic Spirit Clovis... closely watched by Heroic Spirit Lotar... closely watched by Heroic Spirit Leonidas...)

When Lance first discovered that the Reputation Value could continue to accumulate even after the target was met, he even went out of his way to find excuses to grind the numbers.

He soon discovered that at the very beginning, only the "White Dragon" Lotar was watching him.

But as his unconventional style of doing things spread, the Reputation Value accumulated on his panel grew higher and higher, and more and more Heroic Spirits began to cast their gazes upon him.

At certain moments, right after he finished an act of extortion, the panel would even thoughtfully pop up with an extra bolded notification.

[Heroic Spirit Clovis is shocked by your shameless conduct...]

[Heroic Spirit Leonidas finds your dog-eat-dog, bandit-like methods very interesting...]

[Heroic Spirit Lotar sends a gaze full of question marks...]

Lance chewed on his candied fruit as he read these notifications.

He wasn’t sure what kind of strange result would come from being stared at by so many famous Heroic Spirits at once when the trial’s rewards were tallied.

But he didn’t care in the slightest.

Lance was quite satisfied with this experience.

He felt he had completely figured out this Trial World.

From the townspeople to the Lords, hardly any of the people on this continent were clean.

The more polite and tolerant you were with them, the more they saw you as a sucker they could easily manipulate.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered using gentle and reasonable methods to complete the trial at first.

It was just that these people were too nauseating.

When faced with a crisis, they’d cry for their mothers and fathers, but once the crisis was over, they’d turn on you faster than you could flip a page.

They would constantly try to guilt-trip you with the noblest of moral standards.

The moment they sensed you were a good person with a moral compass, they would immediately push their luck and make all sorts of excessive demands.

And if you refused, they would use the most vicious language to curse you and spread rumors behind your back.

This was what baffled Lance the most.

’How does a bunch of people with no morals learn how to guilt-trip others?’

"Kid, your reputation in the south absolutely stinks."

Ascalon’s rough voice echoed in his mind.

"The people in the taverns are all comparing you to that ’Pure White Knight’ who’s been gaining fame recently. They’re saying you’re worse than a sewer rat."

"Let it stink, then."

Lance stretched lazily, completely unconcerned, and swallowed a piece of candied fruit coated in sugar.

"Besides, I’ve already blown past my trial objective. They can curse me all they want."

Not only was he not angry, Lance even felt a hint of schadenfreude.

Throughout his journey, because he had to focus most of his energy on rigorously practicing his Advanced Spear Skill, his travel pace had been very slow.

While resting in taverns along the way, he had occasionally heard news about that so-called "Pure White Knight."

Based on his understanding of the people on this continent, Lance could already picture the miserable state of that poor sap.

In this bizarre Trial World filled with unruly commoners,

the more praise one received and the better one’s reputation was,

it could only mean one thing:

that the person being praised was being scammed that much more horribly by these greedy villagers, and was putting in more unpaid labor and suffering more grievances.

The villagers in this trial, every last one of them, were Vampires who had mastered the art of freeloading.

"However."

Lance sat up straight and lifted the carriage’s cloth curtain to glance at the sky outside.

"There are still ten days left."

He planned to take a good rest and recuperate in this final city, Golden Ears City.

Once he was back in peak condition, he would set off directly for the nearby King’s Canyon to submit his trial quest.

He had planned it out long ago. He had to leave at the very last moment.

He didn’t want to waste a single bit of this opportunity the Star Realm provided for accelerated growth with no side effects.

He planned to use the last few peaceful days in Golden Ears City to grind the Skill Level of that final Spear Technique.