After the meal, Anna spoke to Rein with a slightly shy expression, “Rein, can you come to the room for a moment?”
Having spent a day at Rein’s home, Anna still felt somewhat uneasy—not because Rein’s family treated her badly, but because… they were too enthusiastic.
The two made their way to a room on the second floor.
“Rein, I… I want to go back to my own home,” Anna said, lowering her head with her fingers interlocked tightly, clutching the hem of her skirt.
For some reason, although Rein was her savior, every time she faced him, Anna always felt a bit nervous, and her heart would pound fiercely.
“That’s… probably not a good idea,” Rein shook his head and declined.
“Ah?! This… why… why not?” Anna looked at Rein with a puzzled and surprised expression, her mind a tangle of confusion. This response was not what she had expected at all. Could it be that…
While the girl’s thoughts fluttered, Rein spoke with a serious expression:
“According to Lord Hamilton, the constable, the Blackbeard I killed last time is the younger brother of the leader of the County Town hyena gang. I’m worried that they might send someone to investigate his brother’s disappearance!”
“So, it’s better for you to stay here for the time being and not go back.”
“Ah!” Anna’s face immediately turned pale.
“Don’t worry, I will be joining the Night Watcher’s Army soon…” To calm Anna’s shocked emotions, Rein shared with her a part of his conversation in Lord Hamilton’s office.
After his explanation, Anna felt somewhat relieved; her complexion also stabilized considerably, and she nodded:
“Then… alright then! I’ll help out with whatever I can,” she agreed.
Rein waved his hand and said, “If you have time, you could keep Bo He company. No one is at home usually, and I’m sure she’d be very happy to have your company.”
“Of course, that’s no problem. Bo He is very cute and well-behaved,” Anna’s eyes narrowed happily into crescents as she spoke of Bo He.
“That’s enough then, don’t worry, things will get better and better!”
Anna looked at Rein’s determined expression, nodded, and gave a firm “Mhm.”
Although Rein was only a few months older than her, he inexplicably gave her a sense of reliability. She believed in what Rein said!
In the afternoon, on his way to the blacksmith shop, Rein checked another core skill of the blacksmith trade, ‘Hammer Mastery,’ which was represented by the icon of a diagonally placed flathead hammer.
[Hammer Mastery lv1 (Passive): Slight increase in damage when the host uses any hammer-type weapons.]
Rein frowned as he read, having always practiced swordsmanship, was he now expected to learn some sort of hammer-based combat skill?
It seemed that this skill wasn’t likely to immediately enhance his combat abilities.
However, Rein was already quite satisfied with his promotion to blacksmith, both with the increase in Strength and the acquisition of new active skills, especially ‘Blacksmith’s Strength.’
Rein flipped to the first page of his status panel.
Name: Rein Carlan
Profession: Blacksmith lv1 (1/100) / Militiaman lv3 (328/500)
Constitution: 6
Strength: 9
Agility: 8
Spirit: 8
Remaining attribute points: 0
Remaining Skill Points: 1
Beneath both core skills, there was a mention of a ‘lv’ suggesting that they were likely upgradable.
But Rein noticed that there wasn’t an experience bar in brackets beneath them, which could very well mean that core skills couldn’t be upgraded through practice, but only through the use of Skill Points.
This caused a slight frown on Rein’s brow.
Because this meant that the already scarce Skill Points were now even more precious.
Rein looked at the remaining 1 Skill Point on the panel, hesitating again and again, but still not assigning it.
“The Giant Bear Breathing Technique is currently at the second level, and progress isn’t too slow, but once it reaches the third level, it will take much longer.”
“I was thinking of waiting until I reach the third level of the Giant Bear Breathing Technique before using the points to jump directly to level 4. The advancement of breathing techniques can bring an all-around improvement to physical condition, making them highly cost-effective.”
“But now a core skill has emerged that cannot be improved through practice alone, which is quite troublesome,” Rein mused as he walked towards the blacksmith’s shop.
“Moreover, given this trend, the shortage of skill points is likely to grow more significant over time.”
“As for a solution…”
“Either I find a way to trigger more professions, but right now, this seems highly uncertain. I had hoped that a week of training with the greyhound would lead to a new profession panel like a Dog Trainer or Beast Tamer, but it never materialized.”
“So it seems the only thing I can control right now is to continue advancing the profession levels of a blacksmith or militiaman.”
After reflecting for a while, Rein’s goal became clear. Once he returned to the blacksmith’s shop, his enthusiasm reignited, and he continued to learn horseshoe forging from Blacksmith Boris.
After an afternoon of continued learning, Rein became increasingly adept at forging horseshoes, and Blacksmith Boris found less and less to do.
This couldn’t help but impress Boris, who hadn’t expected the kid to have such a talent for blacksmithing!
Regrettably, after an afternoon of ‘hard work’, his blacksmith profession level had only risen by 5 points, now at Blacksmith lv1 (5/100).
It seemed that after becoming a blacksmith, the experience provided by some of the forging outputs was becoming less and less.
As the sky grew dark, Rein left the blacksmith’s shop and headed towards Habsburg Manor.
After returning to the page dormitory, Rein chatted briefly with George before drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, as a new week of training began, the pages were to undergo archery training, still overseen by Humbert, the manor’s veteran guard.
As part of the Habsburg Manor Guard’s assessment, both swordsmanship and archery were mandatory skills to be learned.
The group of pages arrived at the northwest corner of the outer yard of Habsburg manor, where ten neatly aligned targets were set up, and a variety of training bows of different sizes and draw weights were laid out in the adjacent shelter.
Rein took a careful look and noticed that there were short bows, war bows, and longbows over one and a half meters in length.
“Today, we will be practicing archery. Everyone, go to the shelter and pick a bow that suits your strength and an arrow quiver,” Instructor Humbert commanded, with his hands clasped behind his back and a stern tone.
As soon as Instructor Humbert finished speaking, the pages swarmed the shelter to pick their bows.
Because of limited strength, most of the pages chose short bows.
But quite a few among the pseudo-nobles were tall and strong and opted for regular-sized war bows.
Rein also selected a war bow, but he deliberately chose one that was slightly less powerful, about a medium draw weight.
Otherwise, with his actual strength, Rein could have chosen the most potent war bow available here.
Thick eyebrows glanced over at Rein and saw that he had picked a bow with a higher draw weight than his own. He couldn’t help but snort coldly, thinking to himself, “That shouldn’t be right, Rein is supposed to be weaker than me!”
However, he didn’t verbally mock Rein and instead turned away with a darkened expression.
It seemed he remembered that very unpleasant brawl.
Remembering the fight, Thick Eyebrows felt his stomach churn a bit and cursed inwardly, “Damn it! What the hell is Jack up to, it’s been a week, and now the guy’s gone missing.”
“But… it’s likely that the drunk Jack has gone off to cause more trouble!”
“Seeing as we’ve had a similar incident before, that bastard spent half a month carousing at a widow’s expense after earning some money, only to be kicked out when he was broke.”
Thick Eyebrows shook his head in frustration, regretting having paid Jack in full ahead of time that day!
That good-for-nothing was just too unreliable!
Rein was naturally very eager about archery, but currently, he couldn’t afford to allocate his precious skill points into it.
So after a whole day of sincere effort, his progress in archery was modest, adding only a Basic Archery lv1 (8/100) badge to his existing militia panel.
After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and accuracy in archery required extensive practice over time.
This caused a flicker of disappointment in Humbert’s eyes, who had held high hopes for Rein.
However, this turn of events delighted Thick Eyebrows, who had been quite anxious initially.
Since archery was one of the mandatory parts of the guard’s assessment, Rein’s poor archery skills would significantly drag down his overall score during the evaluation.
In contrast, his second-ranked swordsmanship combined with top-ranked archery would ensure his total score surpassed Rein’s.
He had it in the bag!