Considering all the expensive items that he was wearing; which was basically the heavy frost-fire glaive, a horned helmet, the a chest plate which securely covered his whole torso, heavy gauntlets, and armored leg pieces, it was insane.
It was a total of exactly five hundred percent extra boost to his base attributes when the runes were fully active.
It was a crazy, crazy stat increase for anyone, but his blessings and the resources of Oresfall made it possible.
The only one in the entire squad who could even theoretically fight him in a one-on-one brawl at this point was none other than Octavia.
And honestly, even she couldn’t exactly cleanly reach his massive level of raw stat boosts during the day. The sheer buff he had were just completely crazy whenever he had his full armor set on and his flames ignited.
But there was exactly one thing that Octavia possessed that still trumped Vance.
And the one thing that made won against him in, was the fact that she was born with a much higher mana vein rank than him.
Since her mana veins were A-Rank, the natural efficiency of her daily training was also much, much better than the rest of the kids. She could train faster and climb the knight ranks faster. And due to that genetic advantage, she had already pushed herself one full rank higher than everyone else in the squad.
But of course, a minor rank advantage alone wasn’t really enough to easily beat Vance when he was fully armored and had his runes active.
Octavia also possessed a much higher battle IQ of sorts and her reaction speed also was much higher.
Fighting just came completely naturally for her, while Vance and the others had to constantly drill and train for it. It was mostly about the split-second tactical decisions they instinctively made while fighting that made her much better than them.
And it was just the classic difference of normal people having to think before they acted, compared to a natural prodigy whose body just flawlessly moved before they even consciously thought about it.
And Octavia was exactly the kind of person who just didn’t have to think while she fought.
It just came extremely naturally for her. It was almost exactly like she was a perfectly programmed battle machine.
But of course, even with all of this natural talent and reflex speed, it still wasn’t enough to beat a 500% boosted Vance in a straight brawl.
So what actually made her better than him?
It was actually highly situational, and it was directly connected to her unique Moon Princess blessing.
During the nighttime, especially right around the early evening when the physical moon actually came up into the sky, the sun didn’t even have to completely set for it to start working. As soon as the moon came up the horizon, she would immediately sense a massive increase in her attributes.
The baseline blessing boost alone, the exact moment the moon came up, would have instantly doubled her stats.
And with just the flat doubling of her natural abilities, of all of her physical attributes, her speed, her raw strength, and even her reflexes, it was more than enough for her to barely defend herself against Vance’s glaive strikes.
But of course, this was just the base boost she got. After all, her buffs were dependent on the moon cycle and the boost was the most powerful during full moon.
It scaled up to the terrifying point where she would just easily and completely trump Vance. She was just way, way too powerful, especially on full moon nights.
Forget a mere 500% additive increase. Adrian didn’t really know the exact numbers of how much her midnight boosts would buff her, or of exactly how far the scaling would go.
Because deep inside the dungeon, there wasn’t any actual night or moon.
And the boost from the outside didn’t really carry over inside the isolated dungeon dimension, of course. He could make a customized biome and manually set it up to simulate a permanent night sky just for her to train, but it was just way too exensive for one single person’s training.
It was totally not because Adrian was lazy. Not at all.
And he honestly didn’t mind not knowing the exact numbers when he already clearly knew that her physical boost was vastly higher than 500% when it was full moon.
Of course, Hugo wasn’t anywhere far behind those two monsters either.
All of them just had completely different, specialized fighting styles.
Octavia, in a way, was a pure physical damage dealer. She didn’t really use any flashy elemental effects like Vance. She just entirely focused on using her pure, condensed mana to boost her physical capabilities as a high-ranking knight and to lethally enhance her dual weapons.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want to. It was because her curse didn’t allow her to use magic in any form.
And Vance on the other hand, when compared to Octavia, was someone who relied on a fighting style that actively debuffed his opponents right now. He used the long range of the glaive to keep them away, and used his FrostFire to slow them down.
Of course, he hadn’t fully enchanted a shield yet to add to his set, but if he did eventually get one enchanted by Caelum, Adrian wasn’t really sure if the blessing would actually boost his buff by even more. Which theoretically would have pushed his stats to a 600% increase.
While these two monsters had a massive raw buff to their physical attributes through their unique blessings, Hugo on the other hand was basically an unkillable meat-shield tank who just refused to die.
He also had active mana veins like the rest of them, which meant that he wasn’t any weaker than the other two in terms of raw output in their buff less forms. He was just specialized in a completely different aspect of survival and healing.
The other two kids, Milo and Tessa, were pretty good too. But compared to the top three monsters, they weren’t exactly as potent when it came to massive, open-field wars.
They were both incredibly gppd in one-on-one assassination fights or duels, but in large-scale chaotic wars, their overall battlefield impact just wasn’t as good as the other three heavy hitters. Of course, they were vastly stronger than the standard Oresfall soldiers, but compared to Vance and Octavia, they weren’t really meant for the vanguard.
Adrian finally looked away from the five of them and got into his lavish looking carriage, where Serena and Aria were already quietly sitting inside waiting for him.
Claire was standing outside, of course, completely clad in her heavy armor. Since she was the official commanding General of the marching army, she stayed on her warhorse.
It was only a matter of time before the army moved out. They just had to patiently wait for the eight thousand soldiers to form into their long marching files before they marched out together.
Wang Lei was sitting inside a plain looking carriage that was right behind Adrian’s. Preparations only took around thirty minutes before they were all ready to head out.
Adrian sensed the carriage move and let out a soft sigh, ’War... I’m fighting a war for someone else... Meh.’