Damon's Ascension-Chapter 50: Separation

There was a deathly silence among the entourage that Damon brought at this moment, as they sat on the remaining horses and traveled in the opposite direction of the main conflict.

Damon wore a slight smile as he took the lead on the main horse while the Clan Elder, Trade Expert, Herbalist, and Asafo rode on the other four. The officer’s horse had fled when Damon killed him, so there were only five left of the original six.

As for the other four warriors, they jogged along with the quickly trotting horses, not even breathing roughly. The stamina people had in this era was nothing compared to the city slickers of the 21st century.

Despite the slightly better situation they were in, none were happy. It had nothing to do with the dead translator, whose corpse was slung over the back of Damon’s horse as they intended to take him back for a proper burial.

No, believe it or not, these fellows had qualms with the method in which they survived.

They had seen it.

They had seen the entire scene of Damon rushing up to the horses and taking down the officer. To the soldiers who were surprised to find him behind them in an instant, the entourage would have rather seen their Obetse simply crouch down and burst forth like a cheetah, circling around the group with impossible speed, avoiding their enemy’s line of sight, and stopping behind them.

These men did not have words for what they saw. For a modern person, rapid speed like this was seen multiple times in animations and movies, so even if you saw it, you could somewhat comprehend it, though you would be shocked.

But for these ancestors, what Damon did could only be summed up with one word: demonic witchcraft!

Now, here’s another funny thing. Africa was usually paired with witchcraft, shamans, ritual doctors, and dark magic, which was only partially true.

Believe it or not, there was orthodox witchcraft and evil witchcraft, both of which had the exact same effects but were only differentiated by who used them. If it was the clan priest who was the religious leader of the clan, then that was fine.

However, an Obetse like Damon was of the King’s line and should be unable to perform magic. Just like the separation between the King and the Pope, the Chief and the Priest were two different entities with two different powers.

But this wasn’t a mere political issue. It was often joked that medieval peasants were extremely superstitious and brutal to anything that resembled witchcraft, as seen in the Salem Trials, but the locals of Africa were even worse back then.

At least European peasants were nice enough to condemn you first and give you a shoddy trial before killing you. Here, it was kill on sight for the slightest weirdness.

Truth be told, if it weren’t for the British invading at this time, it was likely that they would have immediately cut Damon into four pieces, regardless of his heritage. Precisely because they couldn’t due to the situation, there was a tense silence.

As for Damon, he didn’t much care about this problem. The moment he planned out his adventures and growth in each AR Instance, he knew what he would face, especially in terms of the culture and perception of his ancestors.

Everyone would face it. Whether Caucasian, Latino, African, Asian... going back a few centuries would definitely cause cultural conflict.

For example, a modern Chinese man would be seen as a slave due to their short hair, compared to the long hair of the past.

Damon was rather concerned with his Worldly Essence gain. He wasn’t sure if this was the standard for this realm – as the Galactic Archives did not state a baseline for localized Essence instances – but each slain soldier had given him 10 units of Worldly Essence while the officer had given him 50 units for a total of 100 units.

This made Damon more interested in taking down foes. In truth, this was actually the orthodox way to harvest Worldly Essence in AR Instances. The settlement reward after completion was just a bonus on your performance, not the main chunk of the meat.

He had 300 units left over after his previous upgrade, so with the new gain, he had a total of 400 units. This was not enough to level up as he needed 1280 units, and even though about 10 hours had passed since his last ’export’ of Worldly Essence from his Devour ability, and calculating the amount, he would only have produced 600 units.

He was still about 300 short, but if things went well, he should be able to gather enough before even relying on the settlement rewards.

Damon clenched his fists. He was just as surprised as the others about the value just 3 points of Mobility brought compared to before.

When he had been at the gym, he tested his sustained speed and flexibility, but that was actually a more sport-related aspect. When most people referred to super speed, they did not actually mean velocity but rather acceleration.

The ability to accelerate fast enough from point A to point B, especially in short distances. Damon had a stronger top speed, velocity, and momentum than before when in locomotion, but what had spiked crazily was his acceleration.

The average fit human could reach a top speed of 6-9 meters per second. Assuming that one even limited themselves to 5 meters per second as a top speed, the average fit human would need a maximum of 1.5 seconds to accelerate to that speed.

For Damon, this period of time had been shortened by three times!

It took about 0.5 seconds to accelerate from nothing to peak sprinting speed – and more, since his peak sprinting speed was now three times that of others – which was the essence of faster movement.

Really, it doesn’t matter if your top speed was 100m/s if it took you 10 minutes to reach it, but even if your top speed was 1m/s and you could reach it in 0.1 seconds, you would be invincible in combat.

And humanity had an F in Mobility!

This meant that the value of each point was only 0.1x the true value it would have!

Damon really became curious as to what the leap would be if he invested in Mentality, where they had an SSS rating. Would his brain explode, or would he become a psychic on the spot, able to lift objects with his mind alone?

Suddenly, screams were heard in the distance, along with the sound of guns firing. The faces of the entire entourage changed as they were extremely fearful of encountering the British soldiers at this time, while Damon’s eyes narrowed.

He underestimated the cruelty of these instances. Even when he chose to avoid the central battlefield and flee with his people, it still pushed conflict his way.

From the bushes to the right, one could see a group of fleeing Ashanti warriors who had terror on their faces, flinging their cutlasses everywhere. The warriors were being chased down by a group of British foot soldiers numbering around 20 in total who were spread out.

The British soldiers had playful looks of amusement. Usually, fighting in their homeland was a scary prospect because the other side also had guns, and death was a foregone conclusion for most frontline fighters.

However, coming to this land of savages was like setting the difficulty down from ’normal’ to ’novice’!

The other side didn’t even have guns or any ranged weaponry apart from bows and arrows, which were slightly dangerous but could be dealt with. This feeling of ease and trampling made them feel exhilarated, as if they were floating on clouds as they displayed cruelty towards their opponents that they usually would not be capable of.

"Obetse, we must depart quickly!" The Asafo, who was the only one with slightly less aversion toward Damon, spoke quickly.

Damon sized up the opposing force and smiled. "Twenty times ten... that’s 200. With just a few more, I can level up again."

The Asafo was confused, wondering what the Obetse was talking about. Especially since the word ’level up’ did not exist in the local language, so he ended up saying it in English.

"Asafo, take the Elder and the others back to the clan quickly. Do not stop for anyone or anything." Damon commanded as he hopped off his horse.

The Asafo was shocked by this, almost dismounting as well until Damon raised a hand to stop him.

Anxiously, he couldn’t help but inquire. "But Obetse, what about you?"

Damon entered a running stance. "I plan to hunt some British soldiers. Unless you are confident in your ability to match my prowess, I would advise you to obey my orders."

Saying this, Damon burst into a sprint, causing the dust to rise where he once stood as he almost immediately entered the bushes, circling around the back of the chasing British soldiers.

Seeing this clearly inhuman feat once more, the entourage couldn’t help but feel cold in their hearts.

Their Obetse... what exactly was he?