Chapter 64 - The Usefulness Of Supporters
[You have learned the Martial Skill {Empowered Throw}]
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Foster looked at the message window that was floating in the air in front of him, "Empowered throw?" he muttered, before quickly opening the skill window for his 'Martial Necromancy' skill.
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[Martial Necromancy][Level – 2]
[Rating – Legacy]
[Description: You use your body as a conduit for necromantic magic, inflicting harm upon those around you.]
[Martial Skills]
-[Single Strike]
-[Block]
-[Empowered Throw]
[Magic Spells]
-[Chilling Touch]
-[Dead Sight]
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"It's really there..." he whispered, and before his surprised expression turned into a broad grin, "It exhausted me quite a bit more than just a 'single strike'... but this will definitely be useful."
During his training, while trying to figure out how to use his new abilities, Foster figured out a few things. The most important thing that he had to pay attention to was that magic spells drained his mana, and that martial skills drained his stamina. The single strike martial skill did so to just a minimal degree though, and he could use it maybe a dozen times before losing even a single point of stamina in his status.
When he used 'block' before, it seemed to practically drain all the air out of his lungs when he was hit. Or at least it felt that way, and it probably drained quite a bit of stamina from him. With this new 'empowered throw' martial skill, it was probably very similar. It felt less than what 'block' drained, but it was still quite substantial. He wouldn't be able to use this that often, although he didn't really need to either. He was a 'hands-on' kind of guy, after all.
Quickly, Foster pushed his hand into the chest of the undead, and pulled out the crystal orb that was inside of it. He pulled the black gemstone out of its center, and placed everything into his bag with the ones from before.
He looked at all the death slimes that had now been turned into motionless, wobbly discs, and quickly pushed them out of the way. He didn't want the others to accidentally step into them later, after all.
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"Lynol!" Octer exclaimed with a slight change in his stance as he placed his tower-shield steadily in front of his body. A group of three skeletons had approached them. Immediately, Lynol jumped in front of his friend and swung his greatsword at the first of the three skeletons. With ease, this large hunk of metal cut through its bones, and split the skeleton's body in half in a messy way, causing splinters of bone to fly around him.
Meanwile, Octer had approached one of the other skeletons, and used the weight of his body to slam against it. Through the impact, the skeleton's body simply shattered apart into its parts along the joints. The magic used to hold its body together wasn't strong enough to hold out against the amount of force and stress that the skeleton's body was put under. Before all the parts of these two skeletons hit the ground, they had already disintegrated.
Lynol, being the faster of the two, quickly moved to take care of the third skeleton, and then returned back into the formation that they held earlier.
"Seriously... I feel pretty useless with you two around, you don't even need my help..." Kyla pointed out with a wry smile, and Lynol simply shrugged, "Good that you figured that out on your own, at least."
"Yo, man..." Octer stared at Lynol awkwardly, and then turned toward Kyla, "Don't worry about it. You're a support type cleric, so ain't it a good thing if you're useless? As long as you're still ready to react when necessary."
"That's true, I guess it would be worse if I had to heal you guys every time you beat an enemy." Kyla agreed, although she still seemed somewhat bothered by the fact that she wasn't all that helpful beyond giving Foster his holy aura. Annoyed, Lynol rolled his eyes and looked at her.
"Supporters are the backbone of a good party. They help their members do things that they otherwise couldn't, whether through buffs for the party, debuffs for the target, or healing after the fact. However, the moment that a party needs to use their supporter for every second of the hunt, that means that the party itself is useless. If they don't, the party is good. And a good party needs an even better supporter." Lynol pointed out. He basically just repeated the things that he was told at the public guilds. Since he was always fighting solo whenever he could, he got this sort of advice quite often from meddlesome employees.
And right now, he figured that it would make Kyla less annoying, however, it seemed to have basically the opposite effect. Kyla looked at Lynol with a broad, excited smile while her cheeks took on a rosy color.
"Hehe, so you're saying I'm a really good supporter? A better supporter than you're a swordsman?" Kyla asked with a happy smile, and Lynol stared back at her for a second as he thought about what he had just said.
"That is not what I meant." He replied immediately, but Kyla seemed to have ignored his words at this point. Somehow really pumped up over this, Kyla straightened her back and was even more energetic than before. Her bubbly behavior when she was like this seemed even more annoying to Lynol, who couldn't deal with people like this all that well.
"Hm? Oh, I think Foster is on his way back." Octer pointed out, looking into the hallway in front of him where his friend had gone earlier, as the martial artist soon came into sight.
With relieved sighs that everything seemed to have gone well, they started walking toward Foster, "How'd it go?" Octer asked immediately, trying to move on so that Lynol wouldn't start yelling at Kyla later because he was annoyed by her or for some other random reason.
"Pretty well. I killed all the skeletons in that room easily, but the actual monster source dude was a little tougher. But, in order to deal with him, I developed a new martial skill." Foster said bluntly, before the others looked at him confused.
"You... you what?"
"I developed a new martial skill." Foster replied to Lynol, slightly tilting his head. They had told him that it was possible to do this, so why were they so confused.
"Usually... creating new martial skills takes rigorous training and dedication... you can't just do it in the middle of combat." Lynol pointed out, and Foster stared at him with a blank expression for a few moments.
"Eh?"