CHAPTER 829: 829: DIVINE GAME – CARD SWAP 78

Chapter 834: Divine Game – Card Swap 78

Moonlight Marsh had geography classes that didn’t just cover the cities and landmarks of Kasilanar—they also went into each city’s most dangerous locations and local customs worth noting.

As they traveled farther from Asaein and closer to the glaciers, Rita already knew where Wail was taking her.

The address Wail had once given her—Stellar Glacier.

Icy hail whipped against her body, and a wave of cold instantly seeped in, locking up her limbs.

Her HP didn’t drop, but a new status appeared.

[Perception Lag: Casting speed, movement speed, reaction time, and perception reduced by 30%]

It was an unusual debuff—rather than lowering her Agility stat, it directly dulled her combat-related abilities.

She looked back toward Lightchaser, who was utterly unfazed. When she caught Rita’s glance, she answered with a nasty, mocking grin. "Rookie."

Rita was already certain she was going to learn something valuable under Wail.

Wail’s teaching pace was even faster than Lightchaser’s. Back when Lightchaser had pawned Fat Goose off, she’d given Rita three days of training before dumping her into the arena. Wail? She simply rode the stardrake straight to the training ground.

A flat, endless expanse of ice stretched before them. On it squirmed tens of thousands of white worms, the largest over seven meters long, the smallest still over three.

The stardrake didn’t land. It hovered, carrying a dwarf, an elf, and a human over the icy plain.

No warm-up chat—Wail began the lesson immediately.

"Chernor Worms. Each one has a single lethal weak point. Other than that, with your current strength, no matter what skill you use, you won’t be able to harm them at all.

"Every Chernor Worm’s weak point is in a different spot. Even an SSS-tier detection skill won’t find it—you’ll have to observe and locate it in battle yourself."

She tossed Rita three top-grade healing potions.

"No using that skill of yours that limits a target to only being hit once per attacker. Everything else is fair game. Every time a Chernor Worm lands a hit, it’ll drain 2% of your HP and heal itself.

"Your task today is to kill thirty before 9 p.m. Tomorrow, double that.

"And because you bought me breakfast, here’s a tip—make every strike count."

Rita carefully stowed the potions and asked, "What if I can’t finish?"

"Then you camp here overnight, and your job becomes surviving until morning. Of course, after 9 p.m. you can use whatever skills you like. I’ll be at home praying for you."

The teaching philosophy was the same as Lightchaser’s—either learn and live, or die trying.

Lightchaser was already raising her foot to kick Rita off when she blurted, "I have two last questions!"

"Go on."

"First—when is this course considered complete?"

"When you can kill a Chernor Worm in under ten seconds."

"Second—how long did it take Lightchaser to finish it?"

Lightchaser chuckled, then drove a long leg into her and sent her plummeting.

Even her flight movements felt sluggish. The lightwings that normally couldn’t be hit by any skill were affected.

Struggling, she tried to slow her fall. From above, Lightchaser’s amused voice floated down. "Seven days."

The stardrake’s downdraft sent her tumbling head over heels.

In Wail’s castle, Lightchaser sipped her own fruit wine—too wary of Wail’s hospitality to risk adding another line item to her bill.

Silence lingered for a while, until Lightchaser said suddenly, "You didn’t teach her anything before throwing her into this course."

"She’s already mastered three of your skills. Isn’t that enough?"

"You’re not even keeping a skill active to monitor her? What if something happens?"

"I’ve got a resurrection skill now."

Lightchaser shut her mouth.

"The resurrection materials are on you," Wail added. "Not much—just eight million gold."

Lightchaser shot to her feet and vanished on the spot.

"...Tch." Wail muttered.

...

On the icefield, Rita was locked in combat with a worm. This species’ biggest advantage was its complete lack of concern for its own kind—so long as they weren’t hit, the others wouldn’t interfere no matter what happened.

Even so, she was a mess.

Her reactions were always a beat slow—her mind knew to dodge, but her body lagged behind.

To land a strike, she’d have to learn to predict movements—and that was just the first step. While probing and observing, she also had to locate the creature’s weak point.

And once she found it, she had to actually land the killing blow.

What Wail hadn’t told her was that once a Chernor Worm realized its weak point had been spotted, it wouldn’t run—it would go berserk. It wouldn’t stop until it killed the one who’d found it, and each hit would now drain 20% of the target’s HP instead of 2%.

That was why Wail had told her to make each strike count—if she failed to kill it in one blow, the second attempt would be exponentially harder.

Attack prediction, spotting weak points, making every strike count, wasting nothing in combat—these were all things Rita needed to master.

Chernor Worms were perfect opponents for her, and Stellar Glacier was the perfect training ground for her current stage.

Wail could afford it—every live worm was a top-tier alchemy ingredient worth two thousand gold. A dead one? Not even worth a silver coin.

She thought back to when Wail had first brought her here as a child, before the dwarf had owned the glacier.

Back then, Wail was still GodDraw77, but so broke from owning a stardrake that she was dirt poor.

To let her train against live worms, Wail had smuggled her close to the glacier, told her to hide in an ice cave, and gone to steal a worm to bring back.

She could still picture the dwarf hauling a worm several times bigger than her, beaming like a proud hunter bringing food to a fledgling bird.

Later, when Wail made enough gold, she bought the glacier—but came here rarely.

The little figure on the ice now was as clumsy as she’d been when first taken out of Gilane. It reminded Wail of herself, many years ago.

...

The first time a worm went berserk, Rita nearly screamed Lightchaser’s name.

Just one worm had burned through most of her arsenal—it had taken both school rules to bring it down.

And it was immune to every control skill she tried.

If she had to burn two rules with a fifteen-minute cooldown every time, the best-case scenario would be killing three worms an hour—and that was assuming she found the weak point quickly.

The search was the real time sink, and the hardest part.

At this rate, there was no way she could finish the task by 9 p.m.