"All right, let's split up! We'll attack from different directions so we don't get in each other's way." Camearra pulled me by the arm as she spoke.
Moving to a new location, we found four Golzas basking in the sun. "How should we fight these?" Camearra asked.
After a brief moment of thought, I answered, "I'll handle the quick kills, and you hold off any reinforcing monsters. As long as we don't get targeted by more than six at once, there's no danger at all. Sound good?"
Camearra didn't hesitate. "Deal! You're fast at killing, so I'll cover you."
Drawing my Light Saber, I used Teleportation to appear right beside an unsuspecting monster. With a single downward slash, it dropped dead on the spot. At the same instant, my Telekinesis unleashed the Head Slugger, which hurtled straight toward two sunbathing monsters, silently snuffing out their lives.
The fourth monster snapped to its senses and had just started gathering energy when a massive Dark Light Ring sliced straight through its body, stripping away its vitality.
The entire sequence flowed like running water, and four explosions rang out one after another. This time, Camearra saw my movements clearly. Even though she had watched the recordings, seeing it with her own eyes was still profoundly shocking.
Looking at the stunned Camearra, I called out, "What are you staring at? Get ready for a fight! The explosions woke up the nearby monsters, so we can't use stealth anymore. From here on out, it's a test of raw strength."
This area was vast, and the monsters were scattered in twos and threes. Even though the explosions had woken them up, they weren't clustered together. After two more skirmishes, we had slain a total of ten monsters.
Camearra spoke up, "Next, I'll handle the killing, and you provide support. You've already killed a bunch; it's my turn to pull my weight. If we keep going like this, I'll be too embarrassed—I haven't even had a proper fight yet!"
Since she offered, I figured I'd humor her. Besides, I'd already taken down plenty. "Alright, you make the moves and I'll watch." It was my first time watching a female Giant of Light fight since my rebirth, so I just treated it like a live-action Ultraman battle.
We soon tracked down another pair of Golzas. "Do you want me to tie one down for you?" I asked.
She shook her head and charged into battle against the monsters. As expected of a movie protagonist, her combat skills weren't half bad! One against two seemed to pose no pressure at all. She wielded her Light Saber quite fluently; it looked like a combat style she had figured out entirely on her own—completely unsystematic, but highly practical nonetheless.
Before long, the fight was over. She walked over to me and asked, "We're both using swords, so why can't I achieve your kind of results—slaying them in a single strike?"
I explained, "My Light Saber is of much higher quality than yours, and when I release my sword techniques, I infuse a massive amount of dark energy into them. You only see the result, not the process. Come on, let's find another monster and test the gap between us."
It didn't take long to find a lone monster—it seemed our mission was almost complete.
Camearra charged forward, using the method I had taught her: two consecutive strikes to sever the monster's legs, followed by an ultimate attack to finish it off. Her movements were smooth and practiced.
She came over to my side and said, "It really works, the effect is fantastic! You're just giving away a technique like this?"
I shrugged it off nonchalantly. "This is just the most basic energy-infused striking within swordsmanship—the absolute fundamentals. If you really want to achieve something, there's a mountain of things to learn. Even now, I can only dare call myself a proficient apprentice; I'm nowhere near ready to graduate."
Right as I finished speaking, Tiga and Bate appeared. Tiga asked, "We've already killed six. How about you guys?"
Before I could reply, Camearra spoke up, "If you two killed six, then the mission is done. We've got thirteen, so we can go turn it in."
Tiga found it hard to believe. That was way too fast! On paper, their side had stronger fighters!
I said, "Let's go, time to turn in the mission. The staff will verify it—whether it's true or not, we'll find out once we hand it in."
The group arrived at the camp's mission counter, turned in the quest, and received forty crystals. Camearra snatched the bag right away, pulled out twelve, and declared, "You guys killed six, so twelve is fair, right?"
Tiga and Bate took the crystals without a word. It was more than fair; there was nothing unjust about it.
Tiga said, "Pleasure working with you this time. Let's team up again if there are more missions. I still need to take him back, so I won't hang around chatting—see you next time." With that, he left, taking Bate with him.
Camearra grabbed my hand and dragged me over to her camp. Darram and Hitler were both there, and when they saw us return, Darram called out, "Back already?"
Camearra waved a hand dismissively. "The mission went smoothly, of course we're back fast."
"Here, you did the heavy lifting again. I'll take six, and the rest are yours." She handed the pouch of crystals over to me.
Darram remarked, "With Big Brother joining us, won't monster-hunting missions be a breeze for our team from now on?"
Hitler added, "Then what are we waiting for? While there are still plenty of monsters, let's take on more missions like this. Stockpile some crystals; you never know when they might come in handy. Use them right, and they might even save your life."
Camearra turned to me. "What do you think?"
I raised my head and replied, "It's doable, but you guys still need to hone your combat prowess. I don't think I'm all that incredible; if we were matched in rank, I could still take on five Darrams at once."
"Camearra, have you seriously never even learned the most basic energy infusion for swordsmanship? Didn't anyone in the clan teach you? The Elder was your father, after all—this is unbelievable!"
Camearra explained, "We came from Orion. Back then, everyone kept to themselves and rarely interacted. If we hadn't had to fight the Giants of Light, we wouldn't even have the management system we have today."
"Just like you said about swordsmanship—these are ancestral techniques passed down through lineages, not something you can just learn from anyone. People keep their skills locked away for their descendants and rarely teach outsiders."
Hearing her put it like that, I understood. Wasn't this just like the unaligned martial arts sects of ancient times? Everyone clutched their little secrets tightly to their chests. Once the person died, the transmission was broken. No wonder it turned out this way.
My swordsmanship actually had a systematic foundation. In my past life, I had studied Tai Chi Swordplay along with seven or eight other sword styles. Back when I first started, the absolute basics—slashing, thrusting, chopping, poking, and sweeping—were drilled into me for three full years.
All sword techniques took Tai Chi Sword as their core. Sword forms were a dime a dozen; the true essence could be explained in just a few sentences. If two people studied a sword style, the one without the core essence would take ten years to achieve minor success, while you would need at least thirty.
Anyone who has practiced knows the detours one has to take. As the old saying goes: "Ten thousand scrolls of false Taoist scriptures, but true transmission takes a single sentence." Unless you were a once-in-a-millennium martial genius of the blade, you were bound to waste a lot of time on wrong paths.
That was why, in my past life, my grandfather said that even with just my swordsmanship and fist techniques, and without any internal breath, I could still squeeze into the ranks of top-tier martial artists. Thanks to my grandfather's guidance, I never took a single wrong turn.
Twenty years of practice was enough to match over sixty years of harvests from someone without the core essence. And I was still young, under thirty, strong and robust. By the time someone spent sixty years wandering, they'd be pushing seventy—how much longer could they even live? For the slightly shorter-lived ones, whatever they managed to comprehend wouldn't even have a chance to be passed down. Things like this couldn't be learned overnight. That was the gap—and it was a massive one.
The cultivation method for internal breath was recorded in the book my grandfather gave me; I just had to follow the pattern like scooping soup with a gourd. I had studied it quite a bit over the years, and the difficulty wasn't high. All the crucial secrets came with hints. Grandfather had said that back then, people couldn't successfully cultivate internal breath, so they didn't fully understand it, but they still passed it down word of mouth to the next generation.
Things passed down by word of mouth were the true transmissions. Forms and postures were everywhere on the street; if you put in a little effort, you could collect plenty. But how many people who used them actually achieved anything?
Having a true tradition versus wandering the wild roads made a world of difference. At thirty, I was basically already a master. On the wild path, you might not have achieved any major success even by thirty.
Now, I had both light and dark power. It wasn't internal force cultivated through breathing exercises, but it was still energy inside my body, completely under my command. I could still use it just like internal force, and the results weren't bad at all.
As for light beams and telekinesis, I had a powerhouse teaching me hand-in-hand, so those weren't lacking either. It was at this moment I realized that compared to them, I was simply too outstanding.
Even Dark Giants could have this kind of sectarianism—rare! They were no different from humans; the chasms between rival factions were every bit as deep.