The Founder's POV

Chapter 53: Winds of War [5]

First, generating and accurately directing the lightning bolt towards a distant target requires a lot of control.

Second, Eldrick possesses a vast amount of mana for his body, making it impossible to fully control it, meaning he shouldn't be able to launch such lightning bolts.

Third, if a genius dwarf like him could release such lightning bolts, he would have done so from the start and eliminated me within a minute at most.

What drove someone supposedly genius to act hastily and try to strike me directly? Does he underestimate me due to my low rank? But that doesn't make sense either.

Due to my lack of visible mana and my intentional concealment of my aura, determining my true rank takes some time, and devices can't do it no matter how long they take, especially those reliant on mana.

Also, Eldrick has seen me before avoiding and taking down dwarves at rank B. This, combined with not knowing my true rank, makes it impossible for him to underestimate me.

Again, a combat genius like him shouldn't make such a hasty decision without reason. I looked at my sword, noticing a semi-transparent mark on it as expected.

{Commandment of Sloth}

I released energy toward the mark on the sword, destroying it immediately.

The lightning bolt that was about to strike me suddenly veered off course, hitting a spot far away from me. Such low precision... my guess was correct...

But Eldrick is truly impressive! Even the mind-control skill of the Puppet Master didn't escape my sword and the Commandment of Sloth's attention, yet Eldrick managed to place a mark on me directly, unnoticed by both me and my sword.

I speculated a few things. Perhaps the nature of the Puppet Master's skill didn't require any hiding, allowing my sword, which the skill didn't apply to, to notice it?

This conclusion suggests that my sword doesn't have as many exploratory capabilities as I thought. However, the second conclusion was more convincing to me:

Is it because Eldrick's mark isn't inherently aggressive like the Puppet Master's skill?

This means my sword is only sensitive to direct influences and doesn't care much about such marks that don't do much. If my guess is correct, the sole function of this mark is to determine my coordinates and transmit them to the lightning hammer, which then strikes me automatically.

After each lightning bolt, the accuracy is adjusted based on the target's speed, size, and perhaps even movement.

After a certain period, the speed and accuracy of the bolts increase to near perfection, making them impossible to avoid.

Such terrifying equipment... placing a mark on any target without them noticing, then escaping using the wings, and the hammer does the rest.

Even if his target is someone of a higher rank, it doesn't matter if they don't notice the coordinate mark.

A mark that even bypassed my sword's perception, and I wouldn't have discovered it myself without my knowledge of Eldrick and his problems with controlling mana.

I placed my sword on my right shoulder, looking wearily at Eldrick descending from the sky.

"This is going to be tiring..." I sighed, gripping my sword tighter.

Now that I understand how the hammer works, that trick won't work again, but the situation is still extremely dangerous even if he fights me head-on like the first times.