52 New Techniques and New Friend?

Nearby, Leo scouted the cave and the changes which were being made. There were countless spiders covering the cave with more rocks to leave only an extremely small entrance. He was not sure what caused the spiders to act this way, but he knew that they were most likely preparing for something.

"If I can heal this man, maybe we can alert the human village not too far from here and we can combine our strengths to take these spiders out in a single strike?" Leo thought as he examined the man's body which was only now showing some color in his face.

This older man had a long brown beard and seemed as if he only lived to drink heavily while chopping off heads with a battle axe. This made Leo think that if this man was related to the woman he met earlier, that the village was no doubt filled with Viking type humans.

This made Leo's head hurt because he was more of a quiet and go with the flow type. So, dealing with many headstrong and battle hungry humans was not on his list of goals during this lifetime. However, he had no choice since there were just too many spiders to slay.

Theoretically speaking, Leo was more than capable of killing off all the weaker spiders within the cave, but how long would that take when thousands were living within and only a small handful would leave the cave at a time to scout and to carry back food?

"Well, this is all part of the adventure I chose to go on. If I quit here and return to the city, it would be as if I only earned the bare minimum requirement to complete this mission at the guild. I need to go back to the city carrying with me the Spider Queen's head!" thought Leo as he picked up the man yet again and fled towards the waterfall.

Back at the waterfall area, Leo examined the older man a little closer and deducted that it would take at least two days for him to wake up and possibly a full week for him to be able to move on his own. "How long was this man trapped within that webbing for?" pondered Leo as he casually pulled out many of the books that his friends gave him before he left.

"If it is going to take that long even until I can start questioning this fellow, I should use the time properly and read all of these books." He thought as he opened one of the books as the screen popped up yet again.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

-Click to learn the Air Soaring Technique-

"Seriously?" caught off guard, Leo dropped the book and picked up a different book before opening it up.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

-Click to learn the Wind Shuriken technique-

"If I can use these books to learn all of these techniques that are inside explaining the process of learning them by just using this screen, wouldn't that make my power increase drastically?" now excited, Leo used the next hour to learn every single technique and spell available within them.

To his surprise, these books did not disappear once he used them to quickly learn the techniques which they held inside. Though these were only considered basic techniques and spells, it still gave Leo the feeling that he had more attacks within his arsenal and that to him meant a higher survival chance against stronger opponents.

In total, Leo was able to learn ten techniques. These techniques were rather practiced by even the commoners within the city, but they were still hard for those independent of any faction to get ahold of. Unfortunately, Leo was unable to learn the other five techniques and spells in the remaining five books.

Unless a warrior was able to reach the Master rank of power, they were unable to train in a second elemental affinity. The only Master ranked warrior within the city was even more formidable than other Master ranked warriors. The reason was because he was able to combine his water and wind elemental affinities together to create ice.

Since the other five books had techniques that fell under elemental affinities that were not wind based, Leo was unable to learn anything from them, at least for the time being. To Leo, he wanted to even surpass the Master ranked warrior level, but he knew that it would still take quite a bit of time since he was not even at the Executive rank.

"Maybe I can eventually take on an apprentice, and these books can be used sooner than later." He thought as he quickly put all the books away and started to work on leveling up his new techniques. Leo would spend five days training diligently to understand the new techniques he learned.

-On the sixth day-

Waking up in a dark place with only a waterfall next to him shook the older man to quickly try to get on his feet. His eyes were filled with a fear, the fear that he would die at any moment.

"What is your name? My name is Leo and you can say that I am from a human city not too far from here." Seeing that the older man was longing for answers and trying to understand where he was, Leo was quick to introduce himself.

"Where is everyone else? Did our raid really fail this time as well?" the older man questioned Leo as he calmed down slightly. This older man still had a chip on his shoulder and was not willing to remain too idle.

"That must mean that you are most likely from that village close by to this location. If I had to guess, when you were battling against the spiders with the rest of the warriors from your village, you were unexpectedly paralyzed while still in combat."

"It would be safe to say that you as well as many of your people during the raid were captured, the good news however, is that your village and its people are still alive and well. I apologize but that is the best I could really do for you right now. You should relax a little more, right now you are safe again and my current plan is to head back to your village as quickly as possible."

"You may have been paralyzed for so many years, but right now it seems that the unfinished job stirred up the spiders to some capacity and they are already making a move to defend that cave of theirs. I am not sure what they are up to, but it can't go unchecked for too long." Leo said as he allowed the older man to absorb all of the information.