Bai Shi sat on the throne of Stormveil for the first time in a while.
He propped his head up with his left hand, and with his right, he fiddled with a dark horn he had looted from the Night's Cavalry.
Almost every squad of Night's Cavalry carried one of these horns, and he had collected seven or eight of them after the battle.
They were quite loud when blown, and he thought they might be useful for his troops.
However, could using them to assemble his forces also attract the Night's Cavalry?
Thinking it over, it was better to have his craftsmen make new ones.
Bai Shi himself didn't fear the Night's Cavalry; if the horn summoned them, he would just kill them all.
But his own troops couldn't face the Night's Cavalry as easily as he could.
Bai Shi tossed the horns aside and began to ponder the information he now had on the Night's Cavalry.
First and foremost was their large leader, who had the horns of an Omen.He had horns growing on his body, wielded a yellowish-black cursed-blood flame, and could summon cursed spirits.
Clearly, he was one of the Regal Omen Bairns.
Given that he was also the obvious commander of this contingent of Night's Cavalry, Bai Shi now figured he must be one of Morgott's confidants.
He was quite strong, and his Omen's cursed blood and spirits were things that required extra caution.
Morgott commanded the Night's Cavalry under the guise of 'Margit, the Fell Omen'.
Since the Night's Cavalry had no reservations about Omen, it was only natural for them to accept other Omen Bairns into their ranks.
When considering their status, they were all quite closely related.
Although Morgott's true identity was the 'Veiled Monarch' of Leyndell who never showed his face, it was only when operating under the false identity of 'Margit, the Fell Omen' that he could show his true form to the world.
Thinking about it, it was really quite ironic.
Bai Shi was also surprised by the sheer number of Night's Cavalry.
This time alone, he had managed to lure out more than fifty of them.
There were truly a lot of Night's Cavalry.
Counting only those sent to Limgrave, his forces had already killed nearly eighty.
Bai Shi had killed ten in the beginning, the Crucible Knights had killed about a dozen more after that, and this latest battle had claimed over fifty.
For a unit of their caliber, Morgott had definitely suffered a staggering loss this time.
Although the individual strength of a Night's Cavalry knight wasn't exceptionally high, their numbers and coordination made up for it.
The eighty-odd Night's Cavalry lost in Limgrave would have been a spearhead on any battlefield.
Morgott had likely just sent them to Limgrave to harass his forces, which was why they didn't launch a large-scale assault and only focused on preventing the Tarnished from reaching Stormveil.
But their attempt to encircle and kill Bai Shi had led to their own demise.
Powerful forces like the Carian Knights and Crucible Knights were few in number.
Even at full strength, neither group numbered twenty, following a purely elite-focused doctrine.
Because of this, however, each one of them was a hero capable of facing a hundred foes.
In contrast, while most of the Night's Cavalry had only just reached the level of a hero, their sheer numbers were their greatest advantage.
Morgott couldn't possibly have sent all his Night's Cavalry to Limgrave.
This meant their true numbers were terrifyingly large.
Even if Morgott had only sent half his total force, the remaining eighty-plus knights would still be an unstoppable force on the battlefield.
And there was no way to estimate just how many of them he actually had.
Honestly, if not for Stormveil's terrain being ill-suited for cavalry and the fact that they hadn't brought supply lines or siege equipment, Bai Shi felt they might have had a chance to take Stormveil if he had been away.
And it wasn't just the Night's Cavalry.
The Royal Capital's strength was truly formidable. Among all the remaining factions, it ranked highest in both numbers and quality.
The capital had other military units, including Tree Sentinels, Gargoyles, and Leyndell Knights.
They also possessed superweapons like Golems, catapults, and various types of perfumer-crafted great-arrows.
This battle had made Bai Shi determined to continue developing his own power.
Looking at both the quantity and quality of his army, it would probably be a very, very long time before he could wage war on the Royal Capital.
At the very least, he would have to wait until he had converted all the Tarnished under his command into a proper army.
The lack of high-tier combatants was also a problem.
Aside from Bai Shi himself, the strongest fighters he had were Erlisa and the two Crucible Knights.
The three of them were of similar strength, all powerful heroes, but there were far too few of them.
Beyond them, Bai Shi's strongest force was currently the Storm Knights.
The Storm Knights were essentially the top tier among knights.
A very small number of them had even touched the threshold of a hero's power.
But there weren't enough of them—only thirty or so.
The Dragonblood and Silver Knights were more numerous and could be considered combat-ready for a frontal engagement.
But they hadn't been training for long. There was still plenty of room for improvement, and they needed more time to mature.
Although the Silver Knights had successfully used their range advantage to turn the Night's Cavalry into pincushions this time, it didn't mean they could now go toe-to-toe with them.
First of all, the Night's Cavalry were already scattered and in full retreat.
Bai Shi had also inflicted a fair number of injuries on them during the initial fight.
Secondly, in terms of numbers, Bai Shi had dispatched a hundred Silver Knights from Stormveil to encircle them.
Each fleeing Night's Cavalry knight had to face the greatbows of a dozen Silver Knights, with Crucible Knights and Storm Knights helping to pin them down.
The Night's Cavalry had not anticipated an ambush.
Caught off guard, they were naturally shot full of arrows.
With a range advantage, the element of surprise, and superior numbers, taking them down was a simple matter.
In a direct confrontation, the outcome would likely not have been so favorable.
Bai Shi sighed.
Alas, developing a faction was a long and arduous journey.
But he had been a bit too eager lately. After all, not much time had passed since he took over Stormveil.
Well, time to think about something happy.
Although Bai Shi had used Fengling Yueying twice this time, the Night's Cavalry had also brought him a considerable number of runes.
Each Night's Cavalry knight generally yielded around seven thousand runes, with the stronger ones giving up to eight thousand.
While a few were finished off by the Crucible Knights during their retreat, Bai Shi had harvested the vast majority of them.
With his fivefold rune bonus, so many Night's Cavalry had brought Bai Shi a fortune of over one and a half million runes.
During the remaining time of the bonus, Bai Shi had also crushed the miscellaneous runes he had collected, yielding around three hundred thousand.
Adding the hundred thousand or so runes he had accumulated from killing the Night's Cavalry and Agheel after his last level-up, he now had a total of over one million eight hundred thousand runes, almost one point nine million in total.
This was even more than he had after defeating Godrick.
What could he say? Even though he was facing enemies with lower individual rune yields, once the numbers piled up, it compensated for the difference. If Bai Shi were willing to abandon his principles and resort to methods like slaughtering cities, he would probably gain the strength to unify the Lands Between in a very short time.
An ordinary citizen had fifty or sixty runes, while trained soldiers and knights had anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand depending on their strength.
Little by little, quantity could make up for the lack of quality.
After all, a single storm from him could wipe out all the weaker beings in an entire area.
But Bai Shi's moral bottom line was quite high; he would never do such a thing.
He wanted to turn the Lands Between into a place of peace and harmony.
The residents of the Lands Between had suffered enough. To torment them further would be inhumane.
Pushing these thoughts aside, Bai Shi began to think about leveling up.
With so many runes, he conservatively estimated he could gain another twenty levels.
But when distributed among the various stats he needed, it wasn't actually that many.
Bai Shi hadn't yet decided how to allocate his points.
For now, Vigor, Endurance, Strength, and Dexterity didn't need much more investment.
Under the effect of his Great Rune, enlarging his body also distributed the rune's other attribute bonuses to his physical stats.
In other words, on top of his base stats, he would get another application of the Great Rune's seven-point bonus, instantly turning him into a stat monster.
So, Bai Shi was currently looking at his other stats, deciding which were most suitable to invest in now.
Putting some points into Mind wouldn't be a bad idea.
More mana meant he could cast more sorceries and use more skills.
Bai Shi could already summon a storm of immense range and destructive power; he just didn't use it often because of its high mana cost.
Then, Bai Shi found himself torn between investing in Intelligence or Faith.
In the end, he decided to put some points into Faith.
As for sorcery, his Intelligence was already quite high, and a few points wouldn't make a huge difference in the short term.
More advanced sorceries, like Comet Azur or Founding Rain of Stars, required fifty or sixty points in Intelligence.
He had already learned all the sorceries he was able to learn for now.
He now possessed all of Sellia's Night sorceries. Eternal Darkness required 35 Intelligence, while the strongest, Night Comet, required 38.
Bai Shi's current Intelligence was 30. With the seven points from his Great Rune, he had 37.
Although he could wait until he collected a Rune Arc to get another point from the Great Rune, Bai Shi decided not to wait and just added one point to Intelligence directly.
With that, he could learn all of Sellia's sorceries.
The sorceries Bai Shi now commanded included:
The basic sorceries of the Academy, the basic Carian sorceries Ranni had given him, and the sorceries of Sellia.
In terms of magic, he wasn't likely to see a major improvement for some time.
So Bai Shi turned his attention to Faith.
Although his Faith wasn't high, with the seven points from his Great Rune, he had 16.
If he invested a good number of points this time, he could reach twenty or thirty.
Bai Shi had already analyzed Agheel's heart using the power of his Great Rune.
He had already mastered basic Dragon Communion incantations like Dragonfire, Dragonclaw, and Dragonmaw, as well as Agheel's Flame.
Now he just needed to raise his Faith to use them.
And with more points in Faith, Bai Shi could learn other incantations as well.
Bai Shi had played with Faith builds before, and he knew they were no joke. They could fight, heal, and had high damage output.
For example, classic buffs like Golden Vow and Flame, Grant Me Strength.
There were also weapon buffs like Order's Blade, Black Flame Blade, Electrify Armament, and Scholar's Shield.
It was a stat that could provide a higher return in the short term.
Soon, Bai Shi finalized his level-up plan.
He put 1 point into Intelligence, bringing it to 38.
He put 14 points into Faith, bringing it to 30.
He put all the remaining runes into Mind, adding 11 points to reach 40.
This time, Bai Shi had raised his level all the way from 95 to 121.
Then there were the bonuses: 7 to all stats from his Great Rune, and 5 each to Vigor, Endurance, Dexterity, and Strength from Radagon's Soreseal.
Bai Shi's current stats were as follows:
Vigor 52, Mind 40, Endurance 35, Strength 42, Dexterity 33, Intelligence 38, Faith 30, Arcane 14.
Except for Arcane, a stat he didn't quite understand, he could already be called a low-level jack-of-all-trades.
Bai Shi went out to the square in front of the throne.
The Dragon Communion Seal materialized on the back of his hand, and he poured his mana into it.
The image of the flying dragon Agheel naturally appeared in his mind.
A spectral head of Agheel appeared behind Bai Shi and began to spew scorching dragonfire into the sky.
His mana drained rapidly, but the power was truly impressive.
As the spectral dragon head spewed flames, Bai Shi simultaneously manipulated the storm to sweep through them.
Instantly, a giant firenado appeared in the square, scorching the flagstones black.
Then, Bai Shi experimented with using the storm to carry the flames further or to spread the fire over a wider area.
Bai Shi felt the power of the flames and nodded.
This would be even more useful for clearing out mobs and controlling the battlefield with storms in the future.
Later on, he could ask the people from Redmane Castle to teach him how to imbue his weapon with fire.
Combined with his spear's inherent lightning attribute, he'd be able to wield a thunder-flame sword.
Bai Shi started to wonder how the Faith stat was even calculated.
He had no faith whatsoever in the powers behind these incantations, yet he could use them as long as he had the stats.
Bai Shi always found it a bit strange.
He hadn't known enough before and was constantly in a state of crisis, so he'd had no spare time to think about it.
Now that he was stronger and no longer had to worry about his own survival, more questions had arisen.
Bai Shi raised his head and looked at the sky.
What was really going on? Could it be the Greater Will?
Bai Shi then shook his head. Probing these matters now would yield no results.
That being the case, it was better to find a more practical goal.
For example, going to the Academy of Raya Lucaria that had been harassing him and settling the score.
Morgott was his enemy, that was a given. The Academy should have just continued to be turtles in their shells, but they insisted on getting involved.
And they had previously ordered Sellia to attack him, so they were clearly well-informed about his movements.
Speaking of which, Bai Shi was still very curious as to why the Academy of Raya Lucaria was so determined to make trouble for him.
And so, after a night of rest, Bai Shi left Stormveil once more.
This time, he set out on the road to Liurnia.