Second Life as a Soldier

I was surprised by the lieutenant’s reply.

Most of the time, when I talked about training, he would get a frown on his face, as if he regretted allowing me to speak.

Reading my surprise, the lieutenant provided me with his reason.

“I have trained you in healing and leading. Combat was going to be next anyway. In fact, I have already started training you.”

“Sorry, Sir, I am confused,” I said with a frown on my face.

Since my class promotion, I have had hardly any interaction with the lieutenant on training and skills. How the lieutenant had started training me was beyond me.

“Your shield. It is as good a defensive tool as it is a training tool. This is something I designed when I was in Tier-2,” the lieutenant said with a neutral voice, but I could still make out a hint of pride in his voice.

“As always, there are some things you should know before I explain the fundamentals about the shield and how it will help in increasing your combat power.” The lieutenant’s voice shifted into the tone I had heard many times, which meant I was about to receive a long lecture filled with knowledge of a lifetime.

“Do you know most people after Tier-4 can be divided into categories: Knights and Mages?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yes, Sir,” I replied.

For a long time, I thought Knights and Mages were the same thing.

Only after the great beast tide did I realize there was a difference. I came to know that the reinforcement that had arrived at the end of the great beast tide had a healing mage who most probably saved my life and many others. But other than that, most Tier-4s I knew were Knights. Both captains of Fort Darrow and Dunvale were Knights. Similarly, House Petrae is a family of knights.

“Do you know what the difference between the two is?” the lieutenant asked.

“Only the basics. Knights are physically stronger than mages, but mages are long-range fighters with far better control over mana and elements,” I conveyed the only information I had about Knights and Mages.

The lieutenant sighed and shook his head, one more sign I had long learned, which represented that my knowledge was once more not up to the mark.

“That’s inaccurate,” the lieutenant said in his usual blunt tone.

“Knights and Mages are decided by their stats. People with higher intelligence and wisdom stats, generally characterized by more than 15 points in at least one at the time of awakening, are mages, while knights are those with more than 15 points in constitution and strength.”

The lieutenant paused for a second, letting the words settle in.

“What you said are consequences. The gap between physical and spiritual stats increases over time. There are a whole lot of theories on how the skills people receive in some way favor your dominant stats at the time of awakening. Here is a book if you want to read in more detail about that,” the lieutenant said, passing a thin book.

“Another difference between Knights and Mages is that Mages rely on spells to create long-range effects, as you mentioned. Knights, on the other hand, shape their mana to give the desired effect directly through willpower. In fact, willpower is usually the only spiritual attribute in which Knights surpass Mages. If you’ve seen wind blades coming off Captain Darrow’s sword, that’s a good example.”

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I nodded, for the first time getting knowledge about how things work in Tier-4. If I understood correctly, even in lower tiers those distinctions could be made.

What I called a mana-oriented build for myself was basically a mage build, whereas the build of my squad could be said to be a knight build, with the only distinction that we do not have any elemental affinity to create any significant effect.

Almost all Tier-2s in my squad had some elemental skill that created very little elemental effect, that too only close to the body. Even my skill [Vital Restoration (UC)] could be considered one of those skills.

“This is why people with high elemental affinity are trained in Knights’ academies or Mages’ academies so that they learn about what skills to choose, how to cultivate, while maintaining their build until they reach Tier-4 so that once they reach Tier-4 and form core, their core will align with those stats and skills, making their build permanent.”

”Now, can you tell me why these things are not taught during training, and everyone is pushed toward the Knight path?” the lieutenant asked.

I took a minute to think because the lieutenant’s statement had given me a glimpse of what happens after the core is formed and sparked curiosity about how my stats and skills will look once I reach Tier-4.

At the same time, I realized my path to Tier-4 currently looked impossible to find.

Pushing those thoughts away, I focused on the lieutenant’s question, then replied.

“From what I know, people with higher affinity show visible signs even before awakening, so it is safe to say that in military training most people will have elemental affinity of less than 65%. I am assuming the army does not want to waste extra resources and complicate things when training, so one training can be applied to all recruits.”

Our training is basically designed to mass-produce soldiers. It is hard to imagine that they could accommodate mage training.

“Yes, also people with mage-level stats are very uncommon even among nobles. Only 1 out of 1000 people will have mage-level stats, so the army would not lose anything significant,” the lieutenant said.

If it were any other time, I would be angry, but by now I had learned that many of these decisions were less about discrimination against commoners and more about running the army effectively and efficiently.

For such a huge kingdom with such a huge army, there is a need to mass-produce soldiers while keeping costs as low as possible.

“So how does all this talk about Knights and Mages relate to increasing your combat power?” As the lieutenant said those words, I remembered why we were having this conversation. With how interested I was in these topics, I had forgotten the main point.

“You see, mage spells are based on runes, and you should also know that there are not many non-elemental runes. You can add that as one more reason the army does not invest much time informing recruits about the mage path. This is where that shield comes into place. Have you practiced passing your mana through the shield’s runes?”

“Yes, every day.” I had been using it to train my [Mana Manipulation] skill using the lieutenant’s shield. Out in the wild, playing with the shield and its runes was my favorite pastime.

That was the only reason my [Mana Manipulation] skill had leveled up so fast.

“Can you manipulate mana in the same pattern and create the rune within the shield without using the shield?”

“I think so,” I replied. I had never tried it, but my [Mana Manipulation] was high enough to do that—just maybe not on the first try.

“Doing so will create a mana shield.” The lieutenant smiled and gave me a nod to go ahead. “You should give it a try. It is not something soldiers with low mana capacity can use, but you have very high mana capacity. It can be very useful for you.”

A mana shield.

Those words increased my enthusiasm a thousandfold, but I also needed to rethink my plans for skill development.

I concentrated on moving mana without using the shield.

I raised my hand, and through my left hand—my shield hand—I sent an invisible thread of mana out and moved it in a spiral pattern. I was doing the process very slowly. Without the shield to guide my mana, creating a spiral pattern proved to be very difficult. On my first try, the spiral failed before I was even halfway through. On the second try, I completed the spiral, but when I got to the rune symbol part, I failed to form the shape again.

On the third try, I was finally able to complete the whole pattern as I drew the rune symbols that were inside the shield.

The whole spiral hardened. The invisible mana that I was using thickened, forming a translucent shield of the same thickness as the mana film when my shield expands.

Looking at the mana shield, about the size of my head, my eyes widened and my smile reached my ears.

It took me a lot of time to form the shield, but I was sure that over time, with more practice, I could make it as fast as I do with my shield. Maybe I can even create multiple shields.

The possibilities were endless, especially for someone like me—a sergeant who monitors the whole squad and surroundings. A technique like this could save my soldiers from ambushes.

Avoiding deaths like Walter’s—all I needed to do was train.