Chapter 20: Strange Fighting Spirit and a New Task

Wang Yu knew very well that his body was continuously acclimatizing to this new world.

It was absorbing what it could from the world and causing Wang Yu's body to react and grow as a result, allowing for him to develop toward transcendence.

The immediate problem that Wang Yu was facing was that he didn't understand "fighting spirit," meaning that his body wouldn't naturally be able to produce it. This was a key difference between Wang Yu and actual inhabitants of this world.

Fighting spirit was integral to a knight's development, since it rapidly accelerated the development of a knight's physique. Techniques and potions that purified a knight's fighting spirit or increased its quantity were among the most precious resources in this world.

For a knight, training one's fighting spirit provided better returns than honing one's physique, especially at the beginning.

However, Wang Yu's viewpoint was that fighting spirit was naturally generated by the body. As a result, honing his physique was equivalent to shoring up his fundamentals, which would provide more dividends over the long run. It was a long-term investment.

Though Wang Yu frequently warned himself not to be too arrogant, that what he had learned from his past life wasn't completely transferrable.

Even so, he was confident in his beliefs. His foundations were worth improving to the best of his ability, so at least for the moment, Wang Yu wasn't too concerned about being unable to generate a seed of fighting spirit. Regardless, his next step would be to train his physique.

If he could unlock fighting spirit, of course, he would.

For the moment, he would attempt to sense fighting spirit with wizardry. It would be ideal if he could stimulate his body into producing fighting spirit using this method.

Before doing so, Wang Yu warned himself again not to be too reliant on wizardry, or, by extension, on the void.

He was still somewhat uncomfortable by the idea of borrowing strength from the void. Was it really his own strength that he was wielding?

Void energy thrummed in Wang Yu's mindscape as it began to twist and distort.

He manifested fighting spirit, something that was commonplace in this world and far more accessible than other paths to transcendence.

The void energy shimmered as it turned illusion into reality.

Strange energy began to flow within Wang Yu's body. He was only able to produce a few drops at first, but even that was enough to give off a peculiar sensation that he didn't know how to describe. It felt much like when he used his ripple ability within his body, like another limb he could control.

It was a strength that was uniquely his own, one that didn't rely on the world at large. It didn't draw from the void or the mana of the natural world, but rather an evolution of his physical body.

Though the fighting spirit had been conjured from the void, once manifest, it was fully present in reality.

The fighting spirit that Wang Yu had birthed from the void was the purest form of fighting spirit he could produce, one that was uniquely his.

Wang Yu sensed the path it traveled through his body. It was even more agile and nimble than his arms or legs.

Wang Yu couldn't help but immerse himself in the comfort of manipulating his fighting spirit.

"No wonder this is what separates a squire and a knight-in-training. This power is amazing..."

Wang Yu spread his arms and stared at his palms. He felt almost as if he were invincible.

"Haha, this is great!" It took him merely a second to discard that foolish notion out of hand. Wang Yu had no intention of being blinded by his newfound power.

The feeling of manipulating fighting spirit was incredible.

"It refills my stamina and clears away exhaustion. What a miraculous power..."

Fighting spirit to a knight-in-training was like nitro in racing games, allowing for a temporary explosive boost in strength or a passive bonus. It was a flexible and useful ability.

It remained to be seen whether his body would be able to remember the feeling of producing fighting spirit and learn to do so on its own.

Wang Yu dispelled his wizardry and allowed the fighting spirit generated from the void to vanish bit by bit from his body. The feeling of controlling an additional arm gradually vanished.

He carefully recalled the sensation of having that energy flow throughout his body as he did his best to restrict his conscious control over it.

He allowed his body to work instinctively as he smiled. He could sense how potent fighting spirit was; his body, his best companion, could surely do the same.

Gradually, he could feel something flowing through his body, like rivulets of liquid coming together to form a stream, which he was able to manipulate.

Wang Yu grinned. He had succeeded!

His body had memorized the sensation of manifesting the foreign energy. Though he didn't know quite how fighting spirit operated, it was the most common and widespread path to transcendence in this world. Now, Wang Yu too had access to it.

He smiled again and closed his eyes as he flexed his fighting spirit experimentally.

He was able to use this special energy to boost his physique at any time. If he were to use it all in one fell swoop, he would be able to achieve a physique of 3.0x the human maximum for a few blistering moments.

On the other hand, if he were to passively circulate it around his body, it would produce perhaps a 20% overall bonus, hardly insignificant.

Wang Yu carefully cataloged the sensation of interacting with his newfound strength, just as he had done when experimenting with his latent ability.

His latent ability and fighting spirit really seemed to behave in very similar ways: both affected his body from the inside, and Wang Yu was able to use both like an extra limb.

The only difference, perhaps, was where they had arisen. One came from the void, and the other from reality. "Hold on..."

Wang Yu frowned. The two sources of power seemed almost a little too similar given the sensations they evoked. Even so, they were entirely different, with effects that were hardly comparable to one another.

"The void, the void... No, that's not right. If I use wizardry, I'll have to draw on the void's strength, but when I use my latent ability, I don't have to do so. However, it is possible for me to use my ripple ability to convey void energy and manifest wizardry. Could I have been misdirected by all the archives?" Wang Yu suddenly felt as if he had understood an obscured truth.

"One is produced within my mindscape, and not the void. The other is produced from my body, and also not the void. They're both fundamentally mine, aren't they? I simply used void energy as a primer to activate them both. No wonder they're so similar!"

Both his fighting spirit and his ripples were produced by his body, without intrinsic connection to the void.

One came from his mindscape, and the other directly from his body.

They really were compatible, weren't they? Soul and body, mind and matter—his fighting spirit and ripples complemented each other perfectly.

Wang Yu was overjoyed, like a small child who had just discovered a new toy. Whenever he was happy, his joy exuded from his body.

Wang Yu decided to inform Garcia of the fact that he had just managed to manifest fighting spirit. He rushed toward the library where he knew Garcia had to be.

As expected, the stern blond man was seated at a wooden table in the library, which was piled full of opened records. All of them concerned knights, those with bloodlines and those without alike, in a wide variety of languages.

Wang Yu couldn't help but marvel at Garcia, whose physique and status as a grand knight overshadowed his remarkable intellect.

Garcia was familiar with the vast majority of the languages in the world, save the particularly rare languages of the dragons and earth sprites.

He was well-read and was acquainted with much of the knightly corpus, and could serve as an expert mentor in the path of knighthood without any training whatsoever.

Even so, at that moment, Garcia's brows were tightly knitted together. His usually stern, resolute features were set in a mask of confusion.

"This can't be. How can Wang Yu not be able to manifest fighting spirit? Perhaps if he were crippled from birth—but he'd never be able to reach the required threshold of physical strength, regardless! He—"

Garcia stopped murmuring to himself as he sensed Wang Yu walk in. In truth, Garcia had noticed him even as he was heading in from the outside.

A grand knight's overwhelming senses easily allowed him to detect Wang Yu. He raised his head and mussed his golden-blond hair in frustration.

As an experienced grand knight, Garcia was a little embarrassed to have been stuck on a squire's conundrum for so long.

He had perused a large stack of records without finding any instance of a case like Wang Yu's. Those who weren't able to develop fighting spirit fell into two camps: those crippled from birth, and those whose physiques hadn't yet reached the required threshold.

Some had generated seeds of fighting spirit that were later destroyed by force, permanently damaging the knights' connection to their internal bodies.

That clearly didn't apply to Wang Yu, so what could be going on?

Garcia sighed. He didn't act as if he were particularly strong or even put on airs, just like Lilya.

However, Garcia was surely far more dependable and reliable than Lilya, who seemed rather ditzy and gave off girl-next-door vibes.

Garcia took a deep breath, put down the records in his hands, and motioned for Wang Yu to sit.

He decided to console Wang Yu, to inform him that there was likely a solution to his conundrum and that, even if there weren't, he could still proceed down the path of knighthood.

Garcia had grown very proud of the squire who had fearsome willpower and who was clearly dedicated to his studies.

"Master Garcia, I managed to manifest fighting spirit!" Before Garcia could speak, however, Wang Yu jumped in.

"Did you really?" Garcia raised an eyebrow. Wang Yu seemed to surprise him at every corner. If he hadn't examined Wang Yu himself and confirmed that he didn't have any fighting spirit, he would have suspected Wang Yu of pulling a trick on him.

"I did! I took advantage of wizardry to manifest some fighting spirit in my body in advance. Then, I was able to start producing fighting spirit on my own."

Wang Yu explained his thought process behind his latest discovery, omitting the fact that he had come from another world and was still acclimatizing to this one.

He explained that he had used his wizardry to sense fighting spirit, something he otherwise had no reference for.

"Oh? That's interesting. The power of wizardry really is convenient, and I can see how that would help you."

Garcia was even more pleased with Wang Yu as a student.

Wang Yu was clearly able to take advantage of his unique resources to innovate and advance further on the path of knighthood—and all by himself, too.

"Let me get a sense of your seed of fighting spirit," Garcia stated. He manifested a hand of aura that dragged Wang Yu toward him.

Wang Yu's eyes widened as Garcia's aura surrounded him, once again reminding him of the discrepancy in strength between him and a grand knight.

Wang Yu's fighting spirit was restricted to his body at the moment; Garcia could manifest it externally as aura, vastly increasing its potency and flexibility.

Garcia frowned. He placed his palm by Wang Yu's lower abdomen, infusing a wisp of fighting spirit into it as he probed Wang Yu's body. "I don't sense your seed of fighting spirit."

If Wang Yu did have fighting spirit, Garcia's own fighting spirit would be repulsed. However, Wang Yu's body didn't seem to react to Garcia's fighting spirit at all.

He gave Wang Yu an odd look, as if he was wondering if Wang Yu had tricked him.

Given his understanding of Wang Yu, however, Garcia didn't think that Wang Yu was someone who would play such pranks on him.

"I think it's strange too. I don't seem to have a seed of fighting spirit, but I can produce fighting spirit." Wang Yu placed his palm over Garcia's aura, then used his ripple ability to send fighting spirit out of his body. The clash between the two auras caused ripples to form where they met.

Wang Yu was perplexed himself. He hadn't generated a seed of fighting spirit in his lower abdomen, but was nevertheless able to produce fighting spirit.

Instead, he could produce fighting spirit all over his body, though at reduced efficiency compared to having a seed of fighting spirit in his lower abdomen.

"How strange—but you're a strange person to begin with, aren't you? Don't worry about it for the moment. Since you've developed fighting spirit, you're now a knight-in-training. Next up: your test."

Garcia didn't care too much about the specifics. The fact that Wang Yu now had fighting spirit was more than enough; he wasn't too concerned about the details, especially if it related to individual secrets. Wang Yu's willpower was particularly shocking, and Garcia wasn't too surprised that there were other oddities with his body.

"A test? I don't mind, but what's the point? Why not just allow me to grow strong steadily, without any surprises?"

Garcia nodded. "That may be the case, but we're primarily interested in testing Avia. I agree with you. Considering your past experience adventuring and your combat ability, you're more than qualified to become a knight-in-training. As a grand knight, I can attest to that.

"As for Avia, however, she needs more experience and a better combat-oriented mindset. Lilya and I both hope that she'll be able to grow quickly. You may be free to do whatever you want, but Avia will have a lot of struggles ahead of her related to her monstrous talent and her familial instability. She has plenty that she'll need to be able to handle," Garcia explained.

Wang Yu nodded. That was true. Wang Yu was more than happy to develop at a sedate pace. He had plenty of combat experience, and what he was lacking was physical strength.

Avia, on the other hand, needed soft skills that were more easily developed through actual combat.

She was a noble who would face challenges far more intense and far more numerous than Wang Yu, a lone wanderer with a horse.

"Aren't you trusting me a bit too much?"

Wang Yu had been wanting to ask that question for quite some time. Why were they willing to tell him everything? Weren't they worried about his unknown background and intentions?

Garcia couldn't help but smile. "For one thing, you're too weak. We could crush you with just our fingertips.

Wang Yu nodded. He had to admit that that was a sensible reason.

"What's more, even if I might not trust people in general, I see you've been endorsed by a fellow Nightblade. As a Nightblade captain, don't you think I would put some stock in that?" Garcia smiled and pointed at Wang Yu's gauntlets.

With some disappointment, he found that Wang Yu took this revelation calmly, without revealing any surprise or shock that his secret had been discovered. Garcia pulled out a letter from underneath the table.

"This is the reward for the task: a recommendation letter for joining the Nightblades at its headquarters in the capital. If you're interested, you'll be able to join us at any time with this in hand."

Garcia paused for a little, then added, "I'm sure you're aware of how we expect you to work with Avia. As you said, you're the tank and she's the carry. Have I got that right?"

If nothing else, Garcia's use of Wang Yu's slang did take him by surprise. He smiled and nodded as he shook Garcia's hand.