บท 42: Rapid evolution
"What did you say, Tena? Can you tell me again how much money that damned bandit leader had hidden here?"
"There's over 30,000 silver coins as well as a hundred gold coins, chief!"
Tena the saber-toothed tiger treasurer had a broad smile present on her pretty face.
Indeed, while she and a few other mercenaries were sorting through the items on Treasure Mountain, they found a wooden chest filled with silver and gold coins.
When she found it, she couldn't help but cry out in amazement.
With the help of a dozen mercenaries requisitioned in a hurry, they counted the coins to arrive at this bluffing result.
"The thieving business does indeed pay well," Maxime thought greedily.
For a few seconds, he even wondered whether it wouldn't be better to become a thief instead of a mercenary.
But thinking of the disasters these thieves were wreaking on the world of Eternity, a trace of hatred couldn't help but appear in Maxime's eyes.
This trace disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, as Maxime reflected.
"Setting up checkpoints might be a good idea..."
"When merchants pass through the trade routes between towns, we can take a few gold coins and in exchange we make sure there are no more thieves in the area."
"At the same time, if any do appear, we can recruit them if they don't cross a certain moral line."
"Merchants will also benefit since they won't have to pay mercenaries or escort companies to make the trips, or at least they'll pay a lot less than before."
Ideas flashed through Maxime's mind, but he quickly shook his head.
"Bad idea, we're still too weak. We should at least have the power of a viscount to avoid the risk of being surrounded and then attacked by the army of several barons."
A solution to this problem did emerge in Maxime's mind, but in the short term he didn't dare think about it.
Perhaps in the future he'll actually use this method.
"Tena, I'm going to put most of this fortune in a safe place, and the rest will keep the mercenary group going," Maxime explained, ordering everyone out of the cave.
Tena nodded in agreement, then passed on Maxime's words to the rest of the mercenaries.
Once everyone had left, Maxime found himself alone in front of the chest filled with coins.
"Shit, in total this chest contains a value of over 400 gold coins, it's crazy!" murmured Maxime.
Specifically, it was 40 times more than the sum he used to create "Les Tigres à Dents de sabres".
By comparison, Knight Ron was offering just 200 gold coins to fight Baron Barthon.
200 gold pieces was also the sum Baron Barthon had offered to eradicate the bandits, and now that it was done, there was normally another 300 gold pieces to collect from the baron.
But Maxime didn't think he could easily get those 300 gold coins.
For him, what was real had to be able to hold firmly in his hands.
Now with such wealth in front of him, Maxime had to think carefully about how to use this money.
"With the university exam approaching, my priority is to build up my personal strength. Having mercenaries under one's command gives bonus points, but these points aren't as important as those assessing physical strength."
"System displays my balance please."
[Available balance: 175 gold coins].
"Basically I had 20 gold coins, plus 5 gold coins salary obtained thanks to my adjutant title by the system and finally the 150 gold coins given for killing a player in his world."
"Now I have two choices, either I strengthen my swordsman class, or I open a new class."
"But I've learned that it's usually best to maximize your classes before opening a new one, in order to maximize the chances of an uncommon or even rare class appearing."
Indeed, even classes had various different degrees of rating depending on the bonuses they brought as well as skills.
For example, swordsman was a common class, horseman was an uncommon class, berserker was a rare class.
There were even classes like dragon tamer, but these were above rare and required extremely strict conditions to appear.
To maximize both his strength and his potential, Maxime decided to reinforce only his swordsman class and not open any new classes for the time being.
In front of him, the sign for the Swordsman class appeared.
[Swordsman: 0/100 +]
Then Maxime firmly pressed the "+".
[Swordsman: 1/100 +]
[Swordsman: 9/100 +]
[Epéiste: 24/100 +]
[Swordsman: 37/100 +]
[Swordsman: 55/100 +]
[Swordsman: 63/100 +]
As he did so, Maxime felt a trace of warmth run through his body, strengthening it.
He felt so at ease that he would have let out a groaning cry if he hadn't known that it was echoing throughout the cave, so the mercenaries could have heard him.
[Swordsman: 87/100 +]
[Swordsman: 95/100 +]
[Swordsman: 100/100].
Ding!
Swordsman" class increased by one level] [Swordsman: 87/100 +] [Swordsman: 95/100 +] [Swordsman: 100/100] Ding!
[Swordsman class has reached level 4].
Ding!
[Your passive traits have been improved].
[You go from a 5% physics bonus when holding a sword to 7%]
[You go from a 10% efficiency bonus when training with a sword to 15%]
Ding!
[Your physique has improved by 0.2 points].
Feeling his strength improve, Maxime grinned happily.
"With this I should be able to compete head on with Romuald."
But as he thought of something, Maxime's smile disappeared.
"In my classes, I've heard that you need at least 3 points in physics to become a knight. And even that's only the minimum to become one, once they awaken their vital seed, their physique can easily reach 3.5 points and using certain special techniques, a recently promoted knight can even reach 3.8 points!"
"Not to mention senior knights who can reach 4 points without special techniques after arduous training and many years on the battlefield..."
"And after that, there are still the great knights who are the next stage up from the knight and finally the epic knight."
"Typically a storytelling family has one grand knight and several senior knights."
"A marquis family has at least 3 grand knights and a dozen senior knights."
However, the power of a duke's family and the royal family seemed to be a total mystery.
But generally, it was said that in the royal family there was an epic knight!
The epic knight is still above the stage of grand knight.
Of course, there were also mercenaries who could match the stage of grand knight and even epic knight, but they were much rarer.
At the very least, to reach the strength level of a grand chevalier, you'd need to have 6-star potential.
But finding people with such high potential was almost a miracle in a kingdom.
At least, it was known that in the Kingdom of the Frost Eagle, the most famous mercenary group captains had a potential of around 5 stars, such as the captain of the Silver Knights.
Their deputies generally had 3-star potential, which was already very good.
But all that was a long way off for Maxime.
He began to collect a lot of silver and gold coins from the chest to fill his balance.
[Current balance: 75 gold coins].
[Current balance: 90 gold coins and 2100 silver coins].
[Current balance: 110 gold coins and 4900 silver coins].
...
[Current balance: 150 gold coins and 15,000 silver coins].
Ding!
[Automatic conversion of silver coins into gold coins].
Ding!
[Current balance: 300 gold coins].
A trace of firmness appeared on Maxime's face then, without a second thought, he upgraded his swordsman class once more.
He left 25 gold coins and 15,000 silver coins to the mercenary group and used all the rest to strengthen himself!
According to his calculations, he should be able to upgrade 2 more swordsman classes.
[Swordsman: 0/125 +]
[Swordsman: 23/125 +]
[Swordsman: 48/125 +]
[Swordsman: 99/125 +]
[Swordsman: 125/125]
Ding!
[The "swordsman" class has gone up one level].
[Swordsman class has reached level 5].
Ding!
[Your passive traits have been improved].
[You go from a 7% physics bonus when holding a sword to 9%]
[You go from a 15% efficiency bonus when training with a sword to 20%]
Ding!
[Your physique has improved by 0.3 points].
Seeing that the physics bonus had increased to 0.3 points, Maxime was very happy.
But thinking about the amount of gold coins he was spending, Maxime sighed.
"At first it only cost me 10 or 20 gold coins to increase my physics by 0.2 points."
"Now I'm spending 10 times as much for exactly the same thing..."
But Maxime didn't think about it for too long. He'd known it was like that for a long time, and it was normal, since the amount of energy needed to go from 1 physics point to 1.2 was not at all the same as that needed to go from 2 to 2.2.
And the more physics improved, the higher the price!
Hence the interest in the future of unlocking very good classes to improve the ratio between the gold coins spent and the gain in strength brought about by the expenditure.
To comfort himself, Maxime looked at the evolution of his physique on his stats page.
[Physique : 1,95 --> 2,45]
[Current balance: 175 gold coins]
[Swordsman: 0/150 +]
"Let's go for the 3rd wave of leveling up today!"
Now that he'd already spent several hundred gold coins on saber-toothed tigers, and was even being vaguely surpassed in strength by several members, he wasn't regretting the investment at all!
He also knew that if he'd invested everything in his classes and not in the group, he'd never have been able to protect his family and neighbors.
One person's energy was limited.
[Current balance: 175 gold pieces]
[Swordsman: 0/150 +]
[Swordsman: 37/150 +]
[Swordsman: 86/150 +]
[Swordsman: 128/150 +]
[Swordsman: 150/150]
Ding!
[Swordsman" class increased by one level].
[Swordsman class has reached level 6].
Ding!
[Your passive traits have been improved].
[You go from a 9% physics bonus when holding a sword to 11%]
[You go from a 20% efficiency bonus when training with a sword to 25%]
Ding!
[Your physique has improved by 0.3 points].
Ding!
[You've unlocked a new talent!]
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