Reborn: A Villain's Journey

2. Status!

After calming his mind Neo started to figure out his situation and think about what he needs to do now, when suddenly a thought came to his mind and he immediately tried what he was thinking:

‘Status open!’

<Status!>

<Synchronizing…. Complete!>

<Generating Status Panel…. Complete!>

<Loading Player character…. Error…. retrying…. error…. retrying…error…. using NPC-template…. creating a new type…Loading Player-NPC character…. Complete!>

<opening Status panel!>

[Name: Neo Kain][Personality: Arrogant, Cold, Fearless]

[Class: Holy-Paladin Lv-6(Veteran)]

[HP: 3500/3500][Divine Power: 500/500]

[Divine power quality: Lv-4] [Talent: Extreme Arrogance, Concentration]

[STR: 45/200] [SPE: 41/200] [AGI: 37/200] [DEF: 51/200] [INT: 109/200]

[Class Skills: Holy-Purification Lv-4(Veteran), Paladin’s Aura Lv-6(Veteran), Heal Lv-6(Veteran)]

[Skills: Hand-Combat Lv-6(Veteran), Swordsmanship Lv-2(Novice)]

[Evaluation: A talentless arrogant bastard, over-confident in his own pride. With your brain being the only fascinating thing you have.]

Seeing that he was successful, Neo immediately became happy from the bottom of his heart, he always liked to see this panel when he was playing the game in his previous life. Admiring your own character’s strength and skills was always a very good pastime for him.

But just as he was happy, his hope was crushed by the talent and the personality section.

“The heck! What are these, there was no such thing as a character personality in the game and not to mention this guy have a talent which I never saw in the game ever.”

‘Maybe the personality can be explained by the fact that right now I am inside a real person not a game character and this body have its own personality, but what about this talent? Let’s identify this talent first.’

<Identifying; Talents>

[Extreme Arrogance:

Makes the person with this talent have an Arrogance unique to himself.

???......Nullify….your…..???]

[Concentration:

Strengthens your brain, and makes you extremely smart and calculative.

You can learn things extremely fast in your mind, But developing your body according to the things you learned will be a bit difficult.]

‘Simply speaking, the first talent is maybe a trash talent and the second one limits my body’s strength growth, even though it limits a little but is still a real headache.’

And the biggest problem in this world is that you can’t change your talent. This will cause problems for the growth of Neo as a strong individual. But the strange thing is that there are so many question marks in the first talent and Neo don’t know what these are for.

‘Never saw a talent with such details and so many question marks.’

Just as Neo was still busy thinking all these things in his mind suddenly the carriage stopped, and someone knocked on his carriage cabin’s door. Neo opened the door without hesitation and a old man was standing outside with extremely polite expression on his face.

This is James, Neo’s attendant, given to him by the church itself. He has been accompanying Neo since the past six years. Even though James is just a commoner and does not have any battle skills he is very loyal and intelligent person, all the arrangements for Neo are done by him.

Obviously, Neo being a Holy Paladin he has been given some special treatment by the church. Even though Neo is talentless the church is still generous enough to give Neo a whole team of servants and this old attendant just to make sure that Neo doesn’t need to worry about miscellaneous work. The only problem is that Neo doesn’t have any subordinates with real fighting capabilities. Unlike other paladins who have a whole squadron of holy-knights following behind them.

Neo put these unimportant thoughts in the back of his mind and looked towards James:

“What happened, Old James?” (Neo)

“A group of mountain bandits are blocking the way again, Master”(James)

James replied politely but it was obvious from his face that he was already annoyed. Afterall there has already been 7 bandit blockings all along the way. It was really such a frequent appearance of a bandit group as if someone was sending them on purpose to delay Neo from reaching the academy.

“tsk, a group of trash again” (Neo)

Neo climbed the carriage down and walked towards the bandits which were blocking the way, while equipping his steel gloves. He doesn’t have any other weapon on him, because he only knows this way of fighting, his swordsmanship is rubbish and not weapon in the world suits him.

In the days of training at church, the trainers tried to train in every weapon possible and Neo was able to learn how to use them due to his extreme learning speeds but he was never able to use any weapon to its fullest, simply put he didn’t had any talent for weapons, in the end Neo thought of creating a style for himself that suited him.

Yeah, he started working on Un-armed combat arts, Neo found that he was able to progress in this field so he requested the church to get him a pair of steel gloves, which he used to train and became the only paladin in history who used hand to hand combat as his main attack technique.

In this world there is no concept of such techniques, so Neo created them for himself. Just so that he can have a way to fight. He didn’t want to be a weak chicken for life. All this could not have been done without the help of his talent of having an extremely smart brain. Well putting the back-story of him becoming a hand-combat type fighter, let’s just focus on the current situation more.

Neo Looked around and found that there’s only 15 people in sight and by sensing their presence and aura these people are just mere newbies who have not entered the ranks of veterans yet. Neo can kill such people with single punch nowadays.

Without any delay, Neo directly launched himself towards the leader, a bulky guy with huge body size and an intimidating face full of scars. But this intimidating face had no effect on Neo.

Even before someone can blink Neo’s punch already landed on the leader’s face breaking the skull, causing the guy to collapse immediately. But Neo didn’t stop here, he left his last position and jumped towards the archer standing at the very back of the bandits. Same process and same results, every time a punch on face and skulls broke.

This is a very simple and honest type of fighting with the help of brute-force and head on fighting. No extra movements and direct hitting, with the max strength. Even thought Neo is Arrogant he doesn’t really like to act so much proud and all in front of mere bandits. A direct kill is already enough for Neo to show his sincerity.

After finishing all the people Neo ordered the servants to clear the way and start moving again. Even though they have seen Neo’s fighting capabilities several times while accompanying him all the years but they were always shocked by his fighting prowess. Making them doubt if Neo really was as talentless as said in the rumors.

“How long before we reach the academy, old James?” (Neo)

“With our current speed we will reach in a few hours, Master” (James)

“Continue moving then, we need to reach there before the night, I am sick of these pests.” (Neo)

James just nodded his head and walked away to command all the servants accompanying this trip. After a few minutes the carriage started to move as normal as if nothing had happened.

After sorting out the little troubles Neo was sitting on his seat again. Even though his face was as cold and arrogant as ever, his mind was in great turmoil, afterall this was his first-time killing people. But strangely he didn’t feel anything when he killed the bandits. It was as if he didn’t even care about those lives.

‘So, this is the effect of character personality, even though I have taken over this body, the personality of this body can’t be changed, even my thought process has adapted according to the personality.’

Simply speaking it’s as if I have become Neo while not being Neo at the same time. It’s complicated but is true in itself. Nothing can be done about this, so Neo just put these thoughts at back of his mind.

‘These frequent appearances of bandits are really strange, though. Maybe, some of my several enemies are trying to annoy me.’

Afterall, Neo Kain is a villain afterall there are several enemies he has made over the years by his mere presence or because of his arrogant personality. But Neo doesn’t really care about these guys they can’t really do much to him because the church is his backing.

Even though the church is not in its heyday but it is still capable of fighting head to head with the five strongest families of this world. Small attackers can’t really harm him and can only annoy him at most. Because they don’t want to get destroyed by the church afterall.

But it is different for the Five families which can literally kill him as long as they want easily. Afterall the church will not take fight with those big families just for a talentless paladin like Neo, even if he was killed. But obviously they will still defend his as much as possible.

Well this is all just a game of politics and stuff. Neo don’t want to get involved with the politics of the kingdom and take fight with the giant families. Even though he has been kicked out of the family he doesn’t really feel like taking revenge or something because he doesn’t have that strength for now.

But if in the future he has enough strength, it won’t be a bad idea to settle this score with a brutal punch. Afterall he isn’t someone who will go in a rage just because he was kicked out of the family, he can wait for a good time to take his revenge.

Just as Neo was lost in his thoughts, a voice put him out of his fantasies:

“Master, we have reached the academy” (James)

“Okay” (Neo)

Neo climbed down and looked towards the huge academy gates, even though the expressions on his face remained same he was surprised in his mind.

‘As expected of the greatest academy of this world, it really is fascinating.’