Everyone was silent.
"Whoa," Falk commented.
'Brah, this guy is strong!' Kyle thought in shock. 'I knew he had to be strong due to his background, but this is ridiculous!'
A moment later, Sven landed beside the group.
"I hope my skills are satisfactory," he said calmly without looking at them.
"Just barely," Kyle commented with a chuckle.
Sven furrowed his brows and looked at Kyle.
"Dude, you're really strong. I was joking, obviously," Kyle said with a laugh.
"Oh, I see," Sven said.
"Cheater!"
At that point, Lily jumped up to her feet again, tears in her eyes.
"You cheated!"
Then, she pointed at the distant Sven.
"That was a Fighter technique! You said you're a Knight!"
Kyle looked at Sven. 'Yep, looked like a Fighter technique.'
"I know some basic Fighter techniques, but I am a Knight," Sven said. "They are part of my power, just as your golems are part of your power."
"How do you know some of our techniques?" Falk asked.
"Why not?" Sven asked. "What is stopping me from learning them?"
"Eh, nothing, really," Falk said. "It's just… they're quite complex."
Sven nodded. "They are extremely complex, in fact," he said, "but I would ask you to view this from a normal person's perspective. The current techniques you use are definitely beyond the intellectual abilities of the average person, but is that true for the more basic ones?"
Falk scratched his chin. "Not entirely. It would just take a lot of hard work to comprehend them."
"In other words," Sven said. "Training, correct?"
Falk nodded. "You're saying you're spending a lot of time trying to understand our techniques?"
"Three hours every single day," Sven answered. "It takes me tens, if not hundreds, of times longer to understand and use a technique, but with enough effort, I can still learn them."
"Of course, only up to a certain point. The strongest technique I managed to learn up to now was one designed for Mid Adepts, and it took me hundreds of hours to understand it."
Kyle and Falk looked at Sven with admiration.
A technique for Mid Adepts was not difficult for them to learn. At most, it would take a day.
In fact, these techniques weren't even really worth considering for them. They had limited use.
Spending months of effort on such a technique would feel draining and unrewarding.
And yet, Sven did exactly that.
For three hours every day, he just tried to understand how the techniques worked.
Although, technically, understanding how a technique worked wasn't exactly the issue. The problem was putting the concept into numbers.
A rabbit knew that an apple would fall to the ground after disconnecting from the apple tree.
Yet, would that rabbit be able to calculate the air resistance, friction, and power of that apple?
Would the rabbit be able to put all of that into numbers?
Probably not.
Understanding techniques worked similarly.
The core concept of a technique was simple, but manipulating and moving the Ether in just the right way to achieve that effect was the hard part.
When a human saw an equation of three plus three, their mind would already tell them that the result would be six.
They didn't even need to do the equation.
This was how it worked for Fighters when they learned a seemingly simple technique.
Many of the parts were so easy that their brain essentially just auto-completed the numbers.
It was like Fighters had an advanced, intrinsic calculator.
Meanwhile, a Knight would need to do all of these calculations by hand again and again.
It was a lot of hard work.
What Sven had achieved was akin to somebody solving a complex equation via pen and paper just as fast as somebody who used a calculator.
It needed a lot of practice to become that fast.
Of course, if the equation became too complex, it wouldn't matter.
At some point, the pen wouldn't be able to keep up with the calculator anymore.
"That was Split Arrow, right?" Falk asked.
Sven nodded.
"Eh, what did that do again?" Kyle asked.
"You infuse an arrow made of special material with your Ether. When the arrow hits something solid, it turns into the physical representation of your Affinity," Falk explained. "If I were to use it, the arrow would turn into an explosion of wind."
"It's a beginner's technique and not very powerful. I would just blow another Fighter's hair back after using over 10% of my Ether," Falk said.
"Because you are a Fighter," Sven answered. "I am a Knight. My Center is more than ten times as powerful as yours. Additionally, I have the power of the Core Tome, which makes my elemental conversion twice as efficient. What if you used 200% of your Ether?"
"Yeah, that would probably push the other Fighter back quite a bit," Falk answered before glancing at Lily. "Or break several bones of someone without an improved body."
Kyle nodded. "I can see how you can have three jobs at once.
I assume switching rapidly between techniques is not possible for you?"
"Of course not," Sven answered. "I need a long time just to use Split Arrow once. I generally use Split Arrow while fighting Beast Tamers, Conjurers, or Artificers. As you have seen, I have a Sand Affinity. After using Split Arow, the target gets covered in my Sand Ether, which distorts the enemy's Ether when it leaves their body."
"Split Arrow is very useful when fighting someone with an improved Soul."
"For you," Falk said with a bitter chuckle.
"For me," Sven confirmed.
"You probably just fire normal arrows if you attack a Sorcerer or another Sniper, right?" Kyle asked.
Sven nodded. "As a Knight, I have the privilege of having a considerable amount of power without having to think about how I use it. Just rapidly firing arrows is already enough to cause trouble for Sorcerers and other Snipers."
"What about your Armor Piercer and Armor Breaker jobs?" Kyle asked.
"I use Spike if I need to get through some tough armor," Sven explained.
Kyle nodded.
He knew Spike.
It was a bit harder to understand than Split Arrow, but it was also just a technique for newer Adepts.
It was an Earth Affinity technique that created a powerful and hard surface on an arrowhead.
For a normal Fighter, this wouldn't make much of a difference, but when infused with 20 times the amount of Ether, it would be quite powerful.
"If I need to break some armor for my friends, I use Sand Arrow," Sven said.
"Sand Arrow?" Falk asked. "I've never heard of that technique."
"Same," Kyle confirmed.
"It's a royal technique owned by the royal army," Sven said. "It is confidential, and only soldiers of the royal army are permitted to learn it."
Falk's eyes widened. "A royal technique? Does this mean…?"
"Yes," Sven said. "Every technique classified as a royal technique has been created by the King personally."
"People not working for the King are not allowed to learn them."
Kyle looked with a knowing look at Sven, while Michael looked at him with surprise.
"Wait," Michael said, "so, you're working for the King?"
"No," Sven said. "It's just a perk of being born into a powerful family."
'Yeah, thought so,' Kyle thought with a quiet chuckle.