Musou Knight: Crow of Cinders-Chapter 79: Horseback Riding Skill

Chapter 79 - Horseback Riding Skill

The maids busied themselves refilling the water tanks and hauling in more food. Outside, regular students stared at us like we were zoo exhibits. Most of them were female for reasons I didn’t care to guess.

After feasting on six full portions, I was stuffed, yet my stomach didn’t bloat as expected. My musou energy gauge had refilled instead. The water musou core was gradually restoring it.

Cultivation techniques mirrored the game’s mechanics, granting passive abilities that scaled with mastery and musou energy level. Reaching certain mastery thresholds fulfilled advancement conditions, allowing knights to ascend to higher levels.

At the highest mastery rank, a cultivation method could bypass advancement conditions entirely, letting a knight leap stages. The locals used this trick to ascend, but they didn’t realize the hidden limit.

The game allows a character to bypass advancement requirements a total of five times. This is because a single character can equip five cultivation methods simultaneously, provided they have purchased four additional slots using musou coins. Unequipping them didn’t reset the perk. The cap remained.

In short, level five or six was the ceiling for most of the population. But if someone was clever, they could fulfill advancement conditions early, then save their bypasses for later levels, paving a path to level eight or nine.

Since I couldn’t access my game menu or status screen, I had no idea how many cultivation methods I’d actually equipped. Three? Five? Did a scroll’s dream even count as one? Whatever the case, I might have equipped or unequipped them unknowingly, since I hadn’t mastered a single method yet.

For today, my body had reached its limit. Time to call it quits. I slipped into a fresh bathrobe provided by a maid and left the pool room. More maids entered behind me, armed with brooms, mops, and cleaning tools to scrub away the mess I had left.

I covered my mouth and tested my breath. It was still foul, but now it smelled like burning charcoal. I wondered how Lia would react if we kissed. Probably won’t be good.

Back in my room, I glanced at the windows. It was still daytime.

"..."

Steady income, food on the table, a roof overhead, living carefree and slow, this was supposed to be my dream life.

Yet my mind wandered. Aki’s words lingered. Sylveria’s face and Louis Zen’s shadow haunted me.

I sensed crisis. Eventually, Sylveria and her gang would storm in to arrest me, just like Troturre had.

Was this anxiety? Imagination? I had no idea. But I couldn’t settle down. I had to do something, even a little.

My gaze landed on a new item in the dorm room: a training dummy.

When in doubt, hit the dummy. I grabbed a wooden sword and resumed training.

.

By the time the sun dipped west, the dummy was destroyed. Three items dropped.

Finally, a purple book appeared.

A rare skill book!

Alongside it, another speed badge and a leather armor set. As usual, I used the badge and stashed the armor in the closet for the next training day.

Then came the main course. I touched the book.

A surreal dream swept me away. I was riding a horse, halberd in hand, charging at a dummy target like a jousting knight.

Horseback combat! Exactly the skill I needed!

But training wasn’t simple. The dummy counterattacked with its own halberd, moving like a cavalryman. Their weapons clashed.

The dummy mounted its fake horse, chasing my clone. My clone maneuvered his horse in return. The two exchanged blows.

Minutes later, the clone took down the dummy. Another horseman appeared.

The clone reset to his starting position and charged again. But after the first strike, the exchanges shifted. They didn’t repeat old moves. This was real combat. I felt like I was watching a movie.

An hour passed. Six targets down. I wanted to pull my hair out as I couldn’t learn a thing. How would this clone play out after he ran out of his lifespan?

Twelve hours later, I was exhausted just watching. My clone had defeated seventy-two foes. How many swings had he made? What kind of stamina did he have, standing on stirrups the whole time? My quads, knees, and my balls were in pain just by watching him, even though I had no balls or legs in here.

Twenty-four hours passed. Could someone just kill me already?

A month, a year, a decade passed. Soon seventy years seemed to fly by as I remained stuck watching my clone fight endless battles. Yet, somehow, patterns began to emerge. Just by observing, I started to understand.

Finally, the clone turned his gaze toward me. He smirked, dismounted, and presented his halberd.

"Your turn."

Well, crap.

I chuckled and accepted the memory. As I grasped the halberd, the clone dissolved into golden dust, merging with my consciousness. Experience and knowledge flooded my mind.

When my senses returned, I was standing in the same spot. Outside the windows, twilight lingered. Coincidentally, the door opened. Lenitia and Lia returned, looking exhausted.

"Welcome home," I greeted with a smile.

Lenitia flinched, covering her nose. Lia stepped closer, sniffing my face.

"Better. Still weird, but better."

"Thanks?"

"It’s weird, but you smell... delicious. Can I eat you?"

"...Instead of eating me, I have something new to test on you. You see, I have just mastered a horseback combat technique. Want me to test it on you?"

"..."

We stared at each other, then glanced at Lenitia.

Her cheeks flushed crimson. She screamed,

"Lechers! Perverts! Immoral! Go die, both of you!"

Lia teased, "Watching is also an education, Your Highness."

Lenitia’s face turned scarlet, the blush spreading down her neck. She covered her face and bolted into the bathroom, slamming the door.

"..."

Behind us, maids arrived with another cart of food and cocktail drinks.

Lia and I exchanged an evil grin. Without hesitation, we downed the cocktails, barged into the bathroom with the medicine, and shoved the food carts inside. Clothes came off.

"NOOOOO!!" Lenitia screamed.

We forced the medicine cocktail down her throat. Afterward, Lia and I bathed together while I practiced my new skills.

Lenitia hid in her tub, but she peeked. Lia’s voice echoed through the bathroom, loud and shameless.