Download App
8.45% Darius Supreme / Chapter 58: Chapter 58

Chapter 58: Chapter 58

Darius left Foldo's little village with his new slave in tow. When he turned to gaze at the fellow, he also stared at Darius silently without saying a word, which made the old soul chuckle.

"What is your name?" Darius asked genially.

In a rough tone that was mostly pleasant to the ear, the slave answered: "Gunner."

Darius nodded. "Mine is Darius Stone. The reason I chose you, Gunner, is not because of your looks or heritage, but because of your intelligence which you have suppressed."

"I prefer followers who can actually think over ones who need to be told everything step by step."

Gunner just watched Darius silently, his intense green eyes locked onto his owner like he was the only thing he could see. It was this very intensity in his gaze that made looking at Gunner feel oppressive.

However, Darius felt no pressure from that glance. "What I need from you, Gunner, is for you to become my shield in battle. That doesn't mean you need to wear plate armor or the like."

Darius waved his hands lazily. "You can even choose offensive skills and abilities and be a frontliner if you want. The important thing to me is that you must be able to attract the attention of all enemies to focus on you. You must also have enough strength to beat them back while I lance them with my magic."

"Do you understand?" Darius asked the fellow.

"I do, Master. However, I have no such power." Gunner affirmed and revealed frankly.

Darius smiled and checked to make sure they were far enough from Foldo's place and that they were no prying eyes around. He then turned around and spoke to Gunner: "That should not be a problem."

"Kneel down, Gunner, and kiss my ring. If you are willing, I shall grant you a way to acquire power that will be much faster and will make you far more powerful than merely relying on a silly Spark."

Darius put forward his right hand in a fist with the System Brand visible while smiling at Gunner. For that matter, the larger boy gazed at Darius, then the System Brand, and then at Darius again.

After a moment of silence, he knelt and gently kissed the ring. The very instant he did so, it was as if time had stopped and Darius saw a prompt appear before him.

[Detected target for branding with the System Brand. Proceed?]

Darius assented then watched as a strange light emerged from his ring and covered the body of Gunner in its entirety. While this went on, he noticed many messages appear in his mind.

[Target has been assessed to be a willing candidate. The candidate is healthy and below the stage of Amateur. All conditions met.]

[Candidate name: Gunner. Candidate race: Half-human, half-giant (Royal bloodline). Candidate class: None.]

[Overwriting existence… auto-educating with provided Infopack… quantizing statistics… establishing loyalty…]

[Congratulations, Candidate Gunner has succeeded in becoming your Branded Servant!

Note: At the Amateur stage, you can only have 1 Branded Servant!]

The light subsided and Gunner rose to his feet with a shocked expression. His eyes when he gazed at Darius were no longer filled with raw intensity but respect and reverence.

"I, Gunner, am your Branded Servant henceforth, Master Darius. Your enemies will be my enemies and clearing your obstacles shall be my utmost goal!" Gunner pledged sincerely, making Darius nod in contentment.

"Worry not, Gunner. After becoming one of my own, you are now a different form of existence in my eyes. You can trust that I will use you, but I won't waste you." Darius admitted bluntly.

"Firstly, tell me more about your class." Darius instructed him, as he wanted to make sure the fellow knew how to use his sub-routine.

Gunner's eyes glazed over as if he was in a trance for a few seconds before he returned to normal. "Master, my class is called 'Vanguard'."

Darius nodded and decided to test him a bit further. "What do you have in your Inventory?"

Gunner checked once again then shook his head. "Nothing lies within."

Darius was surprised that the sub-routine was kind enough to give his Branded Servants an Inventory. He had expected they would only get the Character and perhaps the Settings menus at best.

"Is there anything else in your system menu?" Darius asked to be sure.

Gunner shook his head once again. "No Master, that is all. Character and Inventory are all I can see."

Darius was silent as he pondered over this interesting development. The question now was what to do about the information he had acquired through this experiment.

Firstly, he had found out that there seemed to be criteria involved for getting Branded Servants outside of being a willing party. The system prompt had stated that the target was healthy and below the stage of Amateur.

It was hard to say whether only those below the Journeyman stage could be branded regardless of Darius's level, or if that was currently the overarching limiter.

Neither of these options really pleased him.

Unfortunately, since he was limited to 1 Branded Servant at his current stage, it was impossible to find out until he became a Journeyman.

Darius realized that his choice not to brand Portia or Derek had been a wise one, as in the case that he could not unbrand a target, he would be stuck with them unless he climbed a stage.

Or killed them, of course.

The third thing he had learned was that Gunner was originally classless, but had gained a class upon being branded. This solved one of Darius' pressing questions about the System Brand.

Ever since he got it, he had wondered what the brand would grant a person chosen by him in terms of power and progression. After all, he had come to learn that the natives of this world had their own system of power that was totally different from the System's.

However, as the prompt stated, Gunner's existence was overwritten by the Supreme System, so he was now bound to its rules as opposed to that of Faust's.

This meant that like Darius, Gunner could no longer achieve organic growth and could only grow via stats or skill points.

Of course, to be sure that he wasn't just needlessly speculating, Darius checked his theory by opening Gunner's character panel for himself.


CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Kotario Kotario

Btw, I styled Gunner after Broly(DBS) from Dragonball FighterZ. Google it.

Chapter 59: Chapter 59

[Name: Gunner

Race: Half-Human, Half-Giant (Royal Blood)

Class: Vanguard (Auto-generated)

Subclass: Open

HP: 180/180

MP: 13/13

Level: 1

Exp: 0/100

Strength: 12

Agility: 6

Endurance: 15

Intellect: 13

Charisma: 16

Luck: 9

Physical Status: Healthy

Mental Status: Calm

Affection: Friendly lvl max

AP: 0

SP: 0

Skills: Engage - Lv.1

Spells: None.]

Darius was surprised to see that Gunner had better starting stats than he did. Well, it should be a given since Darius was an average 13-year-old who hadn't exercised much compared to Gunner who was half-giant.

Darius had started out with poor physical stats while Gunner happened to be above average in all categories except for Agility and Luck.

The real shocker though, was that Gunner had the same level of Intellect as Portia!

And his Charisma was even higher than Darius'. Not to mention his intense gaze, that thing would intimidate foes and enthrall maidens, so Darius was willing to concede on this matter.

This made the fellow nod as he observed his handsome Branded Servant who was currently familiarising himself with his Character menu.

A very interesting thing to note was that Gunner's subclass was set to 'open', indicating that he could acquire one later on. Since his Intellect was impressive, Darius was contemplating whether he should set him up with a spell-casting subclass.

There were 4.5 Conversion Points left for the day, so the question now was what to do with them. Should Darius get his Branded Servant another Vanguard skill, something which might able to grant him a subclass or should he proceed in making preparations for his own plans?

Darius then realized that there was no rush. Foldo would need about a week to execute his plan in getting the bandits together and ready, so all he had to do was wait until then.

"Let us return, Gunner." Darius commanded as he took out a House Portal scroll. Since Gunner did not have a map function, he obviously could not set a homebase for himself, so Darius was betting that his own would work for Gunner as well.

However, as a failsafe, he handed Gunner a Short Warp scroll and told him where to teleport to in case the first one failed. Making sure Gunner understood what he was saying, Darius then activated the teleport.

Upon appearing in his room in Poleria's Homestead, Darius was pleased to see that Gunner had appeared right along with him, meaning that his House Portal Scrolls would be able to take his Branded Servants along with him.

The only thing left to test would be whether those scrolls required them to be in close proximity to each other or if it could occur at any range. If it was the former, it would be hard to get his Branded Servants to work away from his person.

Gunner marveled at the well-decorated noble's bedroom. Darius chuckled at his actions and then realized that the boy before him was still half-naked, with only a pair of shorts keeping him from trundling about in his birthday suit.

Seeing the issue, Darius decided that he needed to get something tailor-made for him at his current size.

Suddenly, Darius had a great idea. Since his Branded Servant would need to have some protection to fulfill his role as a tank, he planned to create the perfect armor for him.

He went over to the wardrobe and pulled out a random piece of cloth. Making sure its quantity was enough, he then concentrated.

[Would you like to change the yard of cloth into a skin-tight polymer suit? This will cost 4 Conversion Points.]

Darius was pleased to see that such a thing actually did exist, so he accepted the change which ate up most of the remaining Conversation Points for the day. To Gunner's shock, he saw his master change a piece of cloth into a dark-black attire that was made up of strange patterns.

Darius threw it over to Gunner and commanded the fellow to wear it. Turning around, he heard the Vanguard grunting as he struggled to wear the suit, eventually managing to do so competently after about 3 minutes.

Darius turned around to inspect Gunner and was impressed yet displeased. Impressed because the suit perfectly fit Gunner without constricting him, but simultaneously displeased because it showed far too much of his body.

Darius took another roll of cloth and measured it carefully. Then, he threw it over to Gunner after cutting it up a bit and told him to wrap it around his waist.

The cloth went perfectly around the half-giant and covered his privates more suitably. Darius had to admit, like this, Gunner looked really extraordinary.

The black skin-tight polymer's design and his well-built body came together to give him the aura of a powerful fighter, while the grey cloth that wrapped around his waist gave him the look of an emerging deity.

Darius chuckled, thinking that his nephews would have described Gunner's current looks as 'the last boss'. Gunner continued to stretch his body to see how he would manage with this attire, but found that it was actually perfect and felt like a second skin.

Darius inspected the polymer suit to see what it offered compared to the ones he remembered from his own company's R&D labs on Earth.

[Synthetic Polymer Suit Version 3.0 - Armor

Durability: 1000/1000

Quality: Perfect

Defense: 30

Resistance: 30

Description: A suit made of a unique sequence of molecules that are greatly resistant to all forms of damage, magical or physical. Created through pure Transmutation.]

Darius was flabbergasted. It turned out that the elitist ability had once again outdone itself as it took the average polymer suit and perfected it.

Darius assumed Resistance was in regards to magical defense since he guessed that Defense must stand for physical defense. It wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

High durability, perfect elasticity, and good defense as well as resistance. All for 4 CP, making Darius understand that he truly needed to widen his horizons.

He had only guessed such an item might exist because Gravitas was truly a technological continent that even had androids and the like, so it seemed reasonable to assume they would definitely have synthetic polymer suits.

Before today, he would have never attempted such a Transmutation because he would not have known it was even possible for a world like this!

Knowledge is power! The more he knew, the more he could create! This was how he might be able to beat the first rule of his Transmutation ability!


Load failed, please RETRY

Gifts

Gift -- Gift received

    Weekly Power Status

    Batch unlock chapters

    Table of Contents

    Display Options

    Background

    Font

    Size

    Chapter comments

    Write a review Reading Status: C58
    Fail to post. Please try again
    • Writing Quality
    • Stability of Updates
    • Story Development
    • Character Design
    • World Background

    The total score 0.0

    Review posted successfully! Read more reviews
    Vote with Power Stone
    Rank 200+ Power Ranking
    Stone 6 Power Stone
    Report inappropriate content
    error Tip

    Report abuse

    Paragraph comments

    Login

    tip Paragraph comment

    Paragraph comment feature is now on the Web! Move mouse over any paragraph and click the icon to add your comment.

    Also, you can always turn it off/on in Settings.

    GOT IT