my armed maid

Chapter 20 19: Like a Raven

On the rocking carriage, Nolen took off Yuna's pants and brushed his fingers over her slender and delicate calves.

"The knee of the left leg was shattered, and it was severely twisted and deformed."

Nolen pointed to the wound and said, "The condition of the right leg is slightly better, but the improvement is limited. It's strange that you can move in this situation."

Seeing the miserable condition of her lower body, Yuna looked a little uneasy, like a child who had done something wrong and was waiting for punishment: "Can this... still be repaired?"

"It's so bad that we can only replace it with a new prosthesis, right?" Nolen smiled bitterly and scratched his head, "Looks like he's going to get scolded by Luo Zhen."

"I'm sorry..." Yuna looked guilty, "Master Luo Zhen repeatedly emphasized that I should not exercise strenuously, but I forgot in the end. How should I explain to him later?"

"Let me explain. I asked you to fight. This is my responsibility."

"Sorry……"

"You don't need to tell me you're sorry, or are you the type who likes to apologize?"

"No, I just feel guilty... You guys have done so much for me, and I only know how to fight, but now I can't even fight well."

Yuna curled up in the carriage. She stretched out her arms to hug her broken legs, buried her head in her chest, and whispered, "If I could have behaved better just now, would my evaluation of your medicine's efficacy be higher?"

Nolen smiled: "Don't worry, their evaluation is high enough."

"...As expected, it still doesn't work. Fighting with high-level knights or something."

"you can."

"But I...! You saw it just now, my legs can't withstand such an intense battle, I can't!"

Yuna's tone became a little more excited, "Even if I repair my leg and try it again, I'm afraid I will only get the same ending. I...!"

Nolen's expression remained calm, and he just told her again:
"you can."

"But I just can't do it!" Yuna raised her head this time, two lines of tears dripping down her fair cheeks and onto her collar.

"I have learned as much as I can about puppeteering, and now I can control these legs very well. I have been preparing for a long time, and I thought I could do it this time!
"But when I rushed towards my opponent, it suddenly broke with a 'click' - at that moment I felt that all hope in front of me had disappeared, as if this road had been impassable from the beginning... It was because I was too Are you impatient? Nolen, what should I do?"

Nolen did not respond in a hurry. He reached out to wipe away the tears from the corners of Yuna's eyes and pulled her into his arms.

"You're tired, please take a nap first."

He used his sleeves to cover the sunlight streaming in from the window, and said softly, "When you wake up, I will tell you what to do."

Her current condition is too bad. After taking the medicine, her body and mind are at their weakest and she needs a good rest.

Nolen's calm tone seemed to have a magical power. The girl became quiet, and endless fatigue and fatigue swept over her body in an instant.

She lay in his arms and fell asleep.

……

It was already night when she opened her eyes again. Yuna slowly woke up from a long nightmare and saw a strange yet familiar ceiling.

This is her bedroom in Nolen's Alchemy Workshop.

There was a night lamp lit by the bedside in the bedroom. Nolen moved a chair and stood beside her bed, using the light to quietly turn the pages of the book in his hand.

"Well……"

She frowned and sat up in bed for a while.

Even after drinking the inhibitory potion, the side effects of the liberation potion cannot be easily offset by sleeping. She still feels weak and in pain all over her body.

"You're awake." Nolen closed the book.

"Well, how long have I slept?"

"Soon, only ten hours. You woke up once when I took you for surgery, but you fell asleep again soon."

"Really...I don't remember."

Yuna slightly opened the quilt and saw that her prosthetic limbs were back to like new.

No, this is a new prosthetic limb.

"Master Luo Zhen...what did he say?"

"It's nothing, I just got scolded by him all afternoon."

Nolen smiled and stood up, said "Wait a minute" and left the bedroom.

After a while, he returned to the room with a bowl of warm soup, came to the bedside and said, "Sit over here, I'll feed you."

A man and a woman were alone in the same room, and with the beautiful lighting and the growing distance between them, the atmosphere suddenly became a little ambiguous.

Yuna felt that the tips of her ears began to feel hot, and she quickly said: "I... I can do it myself..."

Nolen was unmoved. He just put the spoon containing the soup to her mouth and calmly issued instructions like a ruthless medicine-feeding machine:

"Open your mouth—"

"..." Yuna leaned her head over and opened her mouth obediently.

Well, with his doctor-like hard expression and tone, the somewhat ambiguous atmosphere dissipated.

The two of them drank the soup in one sip, and Nolen stood up and said, "It's cool outside, come for a walk in the yard - remember to put on more clothes."

"Ah good."

Yuna put on her coat and walked out of the bedroom, and saw him sitting on the bench in the yard, looking up at the sky quietly.

"What are you looking at?" She followed and sat next to him.

"What can you see?" Nolen asked.

Yuna followed his gaze and said, "I saw a moon. The moon is so round today."

"anything else?"

"Uh... there are stars, bell towers, towers, big trees, well, there is a black crow sitting on the treetop."

"That's a raven, a very intelligent bird. According to legend, its intelligence is about the same as that of a ten-year-old human child. It can also imitate the sounds of the environment and the calls of other creatures."

Nolen said, smiling as if he was remembering something. Yuna asked curiously: "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just remembered an interesting incident from my childhood. I was just ten years old that year. It was also at night and I was in the yard. I saw a raven flying in the sky.

"My teacher was by my side at the time. He told me about the characteristics and habits of the raven, so I pointed at the raven and said: If it really has the same intelligence as me, it may become the first to have a title. A bird with the emblem of the ouroboros." A raven with the emblem of the ouroboros is certainly outrageous, but a child who can become an alchemist at the age of ten is equally unbelievable.

This was a good joke. Yuna pursed her lips slightly in response to the joke, but halfway through her laughter, she realized that Nolen was not smiling.

"The teacher and the apprentices present laughed, and I laughed because of their laughter."

He said slowly, “But what they didn’t know is that I wasn’t joking at the time.

"I have been trapped in this small yard for ten years. Every time I look up at the sky over the years, I think of that raven. Although it is not as smart as me, it has something that I don't have.

“Watching it soaring in the sky, I longed for its freedom, so I silently made a wish in my heart——

"One day, I will live like a raven."

Nolen's tone was calm, as if he was telling a story that had nothing to do with him.

Yuna was slightly startled. She felt that Nolen's words seemed to mean something, but for a while she couldn't figure out what they meant.

"... Let's get back to this morning's battle test."

Nolen returned to the topic, "Actually, I predicted before the test that this prosthetic limb made of Lingfeng wood would most likely not be able to withstand high-intensity knight combat, and the test results were not much different from my prediction.

"The fighting intensity of a third-level knight or below may cause damage to its structure, let alone a fifth-level or even high-level knight. With your strength, if you explode with all your strength, it is normal to destroy it.

"Of course, I can also replace you with a material with a higher load-bearing capacity, such as a prosthetic limb made of Zhuoji wood, but it is heavier and stiffer, very difficult to control, and its actual performance will not be better than Lingfeng wood——

"The most important thing is that even Zhuoji wood with a higher load-bearing capacity cannot withstand the full strength of high-level knights. To be precise, among all the materials that can be used as raw materials for prosthetics, none of them can withstand the full strength of high-level knights. Explosive."

Yuna was stunned. She bit her lip and was silent for a long time. Then she said calmly: "Then...is there no other way?"

"Of course there are, and there are many, I would say three."

Nolen stretched out a finger and said methodically, "Since it is known that the quality of your legs cannot be optimized for the time being, I need you to adjust your fighting style.

"First, change all the combat skills and force-generating skills you learned in the Knight Academy. The fighting style of the Peak Knight is too steady and too demanding on your physical fitness. It is no longer suitable for you now. If you continue to maintain this fighting style, it will be better for you. It’s a dead end for you.”

"Two." He then stretched out his second finger, "Then, you have to use shooting as your main attack method. Shooting mainly tests your arm strength and eyesight, and the requirements for leg quality are much smaller - you Can you shoot arrows?"

"Yes, this is also one of the required courses for knights." Yuna nodded quickly, "But what we practice most is close combat and swordsmanship. After all, knights..."

Nolen raised his hand: "Ah, I know you want to say that knights all use swords to decide the outcome. Long-range attacks are neither honorable nor glorious, but they are just a sneak attack by despicable people.

"But I don't care how you knights fight, and I don't want to know. Who cares how a barbarian wields a club? I only care about how to kill them efficiently.

"The same goes for you. Now you are no longer a knight, but an avenger. So don't be bound by the traditional knight thinking. If you can kill them from a distance, you don't need to draw your sword to fight with them in close combat."

"But -" Yuna hesitated, "If it is a long-distance attack, I am afraid it will not be able to cause effective damage to high-level knights."

The knight's melee damage depends on his physical fitness, the sharpness of the weapon and the combat skills he uses, and he enjoys the bonuses of "strength", "weapon" and "combat skills" at the same time.

Especially after equipping the "Knight Sword", the Knight Sword imbued with magic power can cut through most of the current armors when using combat skills. As long as it can hit the target effectively, it can effectively kill the opponent.

The knight's long-range damage depends on the weight of the bow and the strength of the arrows. Because most of the archery combat skills are used to improve the stability of shooting, but do not directly increase the power, so the damage only enjoys "power" and "arrows". "kind of" bonus in two aspects.

However, unlike melee combat, the "strength" bonus of a bow has an upper limit. This upper limit depends on how much tension the bow itself can withstand.

A knight's sword of the same quality can always withstand greater strength from a knight and can deliver higher damage than a bow.

Taken together, the two attack methods have their own merits. Melee has a higher damage limit, while long-range has a distance advantage.

But for most knights, especially the higher level knights, they are more inclined to use melee combat to solve their opponents in battle.

They prefer to trade range advantage for damage cap.

Because if it is a low-end mowing game, high-level knights can use their swords to sweep away a large area without worrying about the number of arrows, and the combat efficiency is much higher.

And if you play a high-end game of 11, you won't have a clear advantage with long-range attacks.

When everyone is a master, the hit rate of shooting will plummet because the raising of the hand is too obvious.

No matter how fast an arrow is, it has a flight trajectory, and it obeys the general laws of physics. The direction in which it is aimed will directly reveal the arrow's impact point.

No matter how lethal an arrow is, it is meaningless if it fails to hit.

Therefore, there is a paradox for an archer: if you are far away, your hit rate will decrease. If you are close, as long as an arrow fails to make the opponent lose the ability to resist, he will immediately be ridden in the face and fall into a very passive situation.

This is also the biggest reason why Yuna is hesitant about this fighting method.

Long-range attacks are indeed more useful in melee. With a bow, you may be able to kill some ordinary prairie cavalry more easily on the battlefield.

But for its top combat power, such as the leader she wants to take revenge on, it is not that threatening.

"You don't have to worry about this. This is not a question of attack methods, but a question of the quality of the weapons."

Nolen chuckled and said, "As long as a long-range weapon is powerful enough, has a long enough range, is high enough in accuracy, and has fast enough bullet speed and fire rate, it will become a nightmare for all enemies."

You want to defend yourself from my shots?If the power of my attack can penetrate the stars, how should you respond?

You want to avoid my shooting?I directly hit with super high bullet speed and beyond visual range. Are you sure you can react?
As a genius alchemist, he never prioritizes finding problems in "people".

He believed in the power of wisdom and creation, and even ordinary people with no physical strength could still kill knights easily after being equipped with the alchemical weapons he invented.

In fact, I did it myself.

Of course, output capability alone is not enough. In order to prevent tragedies such as "your ADC being ridden in the face by an enemy tank or assassinated by an assassin" from happening, the shooter's survivability also needs to be guaranteed.

Live to have output.

To this end, his solution is-

"Then the third one." Nolen stretched out his third finger and said seriously, "I want you to fight like a raven."

"Raven...?" Yuna was stunned.

She subconsciously raised her eyes and saw the black raven in the distance fluttering its wings and leaving the treetops, streaking across the night sky under the bright moon, and quickly disappeared.

"The so-called prairie people are the Lebus people. They are the indigenous people of this Lebus grassland, a people on horseback.

"They are natural cavalry and are extremely good at guerrillas. Linfeng City's unwillingness to fight them head-on must be due to this consideration, right? The city lord's palace believes that Linfeng's army cannot defeat them on the grassland."

Nolen raised the corner of his mouth, "Their fighting power on the grassland may be powerful, but in my opinion, these barbarians are just a group of crawling insects. They gallop on the grassland on horseback, thinking that they are invincible. , but never wanted to look up at the vast sky.

"So I want you to fight like a raven - Yuna, become the Avenger of the sky. You will be inviolable to them.

"And every round of attacks you rain down from the sky will be the last beautiful thing they see in their lives."

(End of this chapter)