Return of the Woodcutter

Aito faked his surprise at being 'showed' something by a moderator. He knew why she was actually doing it—although he didn't know that her secondary motivation was entertainment. If Roan's informations were correct, Gwen was trying to recruit him by first offering to train him. In normal circumstances, he would be infuriated at the idea of someone trying to control him.

However, he certainly wasn't about to spit on free knowledge, since he knew now that it could cost him TPs to acquire informations. Moreover, he failed to see why would a moderator want to mess with a challenger she could easily crush whenever she wanted. Plus, considering their job, moderators were as close to reliable sources as he would get in the Tower.

And if he could get her to teach him more useful things later, then all the better. After all, Aito would use every bit of knowledge he could get his hands on to grow stronger. That applied even more now since his goal was to clear the top floors.

Aito stood next to Gwen on the grassy field, facing towards the central area. He wondered what she wanted to show him exactly. After all, apart from a few people running into the distance, there was nothing but grass, dirt, and stones.

"What am I supposed to look at?" Aito asked.

"Straight forward," Gwen said before using her monitoring rights to summon a wooden dummy as tall as herself. She then placed her large right palm on the dummy's chest area. "Watch closely. This is the automatic activation of a warrior skill called Impact."

Gwen pressed her palm against the dummy, and a shock wave originating from her opened hand instantly spread to the upper part of the wooden training structure, shattering it in hundreds of pieces.

At this sight, Aito gulped, thinking that challenging the moderator might not be such a good idea after all. If she could do this with a single palm strike, he dared not imagine what the giantess could do with her hammer.

"I hope this didn't weaken your little legs, gahaha," Gwen laughed, her voice strangely harsh like a warrior born but somewhat softened by her modicum of feminity. Seeing that Aito stayed stoic—though he faked it—she stopped laughing and summoned a new dummy. "Anyway, next, I'll be using what is called manual activation."

Without waiting for a reply from Aito, she placed her palm on the dummy and pressed. This time, only around a quarter of the wooden structure shattered under the power of her skill. With such an obvious contrast, Aito understood there was a difference in the power output. That much was easy to figure out alone, but…

"How did you change the power output?" He asked, playing her game.

Gwen smirked, glad to have finally caught the little man's interest. "Long story short, the System transfers knowledge to you on how to activate a skill to the level at which it's reasonable for your body, mana, and soul force to handle. In doing so, to preserve your brain during the transfer, it will imprint the skill as an automatic program of sorts. That's why you don't feel every bit of the shit going on inside you when activating a skill."

Although it was explained a bit clumsily, Aito understood the gist of it since it was more or less what he had expected. But that still didn't tell him how the "manual activation" worked.

"However," Gwen continued, "if your understanding of the skill is profound enough, you will gain a few benefits. Amongst those, you'll be able to adjust the skill differently from the System's dictated like…"

She paused her sentence, summoned yet another dummy, activated Impact, and blew the entire wooden training structure to smithereens.

"Something called Overload," she said, lowering her arm. "But that can be dangerous for obvious reasons."

According to Gwen, pushing the output of a skill higher than what the System "recommended" would usually result in damaging the body. It only damaged the soul if the Overload used an excess of soul force. However, in most cases, the body would outright break before that happened. Only those with at the very least Lv3 body could afford to push their bodies over the limits without breaking it.

Using an analogy, it could be said that the body of a Lv1 challenger was the crossbow from which a bolt would be shot. But, naturally, if a ballista's bolt was loaded on it, first it wouldn't fit, second, the string would certainly break.

Aito eyed the moderator weirdly, "That's an… uncommon analogy."

"No comment," she said, hinting at him to shut up.

The requirement for overloading a skill using manual activation was having a strong body, meaning warriors were the first to be able to use it, since mages, archers, and battle surgeons rarely trained their bodies as much as warriors did. Only when they naturally reached a Lv3 body later, would these classes use Overload.

Aito was confused about a part of her explanation—if not most of it. More specifically, the combat classes, since he hadn't heard about them from Roan. Mages and archers he could more or less guess what they were using his own geeky knowledge, but the other one was a mystery.

"Hum… battle surgeons?" Aito asked.

"Aye, a healer class of sorts under the command of the god of sloth. Although the peculiar god manages all the noncombatant classes, his shining gem is the surgeon combat class." Gwen said. "But enough about that bastard. Did you get what I was trying to show you?"

Aito smiled, finding a bit of kinship in the giantess, who also appeared to dislike Belmand for some unknown reasons.

"I think I got the gist of it." He said.

"You 'think'?" Gwen asked, sending him a quizzical gaze.

"Yes, I also 'think' I need another demonstration to better my understanding." He said, trying to appeal to her, albeit clumsily.

Meanwhile…

'Got him!' Gwen thought. In her excitement at maybe having something interesting to do, she forwent the fact that Aito wasn't asking politely. But that didn't matter now that the fish was on the hook. She just needed to pull.

"How about a more practical approach?" Gwen asked, appearing calm.

"Meaning?" Aito asked, interested in where their conversation was going.

"I'm offering to train you, little man…" she said, purposely pausing to hint at something.

"And in exchange?" Aito said, ready to negotiate.

"I want 1000 TPs," she said.

Aito was about to agree without batting an eye when Gwen added, "Every day."

His eyes widened with surprise, "What!? This is daylight robbery! Even a normal inventory bag doesn't cost as much!"

Gwen frowned. "Little man, knowledge is more valuable than gold in Iris. Sometimes, it can mean the difference between life and death. What's more, 1000 TPs could be regarded as cheap considering my level and what I can teach you."

"Hum, and what level are you exactly?" He asked.

"I'll tell you if you successfully finish my training regimen." She said, smirking.

Gwen could have offered the same to other challengers, but she wasn't interested in training white and blue ones. And the only two red challengers in the Tower were unmarked ones for reasons that eluded her since humans' greed was such that the great majority, if not all of them jumped at the occasion to gain powers beyond their wildest dreams.

Although entertainment was one of her purpose for training challengers to the usage of manual activation, it wasn't the only one.

It was an unwritten rule for every moderator in the Tower to influence the challengers' choices on which front line they would end up fighting. But since this was a faction quest not given by the gods, they couldn't just flaunt it around like a giant flag and needed to be discreet about it.

Each year, Gwen would commit to mind those who seemed to be promising recruits. Since she occupied the third floor, and those guys on the second were too busy maintaining order, the giantess had the first pick. After all, her faction didn't need weaklings—although she always ended up bringing some back to Englad.

She would personally train those she deemed worthy enough while encouraging them at the end of the three months to apply for Englad since they needed more men there. Especially now, since a storm was brewing on the horizon.

But she couldn't simply train challengers for free. Every service in the Tower needed to be paid for, faction quest or not. The prices were usually fair, but the means to earn money wasn't. One would need to ascend the Tower for that. It was a stratagem designed by the gods' aiming at forcing the humans to challenge the floors.

Unwilling to be punished for bypassing this rule, Gwen would always ask for a price she deemed a challenger capable of paying. And since that little man in front of him was able to afford a red memory bead, he could only be loaded with TPs.

'Not as free as I expected it to be,' Aito thought, sighing.