After Lee managed to kill the boss, he just stood there in shock.
Luckily, in a manner of speaking, this was not the first time he had almost died.
So at least he did not pass out from fear.
"See. You can do it."
Rowan walked past his shoulder, picked a mana core out of the mess, and tossed it to Lee.
He glanced at Lee. "How’s the arm?"
Lee opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"BAD!"
Lee stared at the pistol in his hands. His ears were still ringing.
If this was what Rowan handed him as a training weapon, then what in the name of god was the shotgun doing to him in terms of recoil?
Lee had fired one shot and his arm went limp. Rowan had gone full auto and killed dozens of kobolds on their way in.
Rowan gave him a thumbs up with a wide smile on his face.
"Still, good job!" He stopped the recording and patted Lee on the back.
Not only had Lee managed to kill a boss, but this also served as proof that modern weapons worked for average hunters.
After that they cleared two more gates, with Lee as the boss killer.
With each passing gate, Lee became more and more efficient.
By the end of the third boss, Lee’s entire right side from knuckle to shoulder blade had gone from numb to a deep bruised ache.
But he was not running away anymore. His steps stayed tight and his aim stayed sharp.
After they left the final dungeon at noon, Lee sat down hard, panting from exhaustion.
Three raids in a single day!
Rowan pointed toward Lee’s arm.
"Try and heal it but do it the way I taught you."
Rowan wanted to see what Lee would come up with after their conversation yesterday.
"Let me think..."
Lee closed his eyes and placed his hand over his shoulder.
Yesterday he would have dumped the full heal spell on it in one go.
Today he thought at first.
He traced the pain.
The joint where the shoulder socket had absorbed most of the backward shock.
The muscle had torqued against itself. The elbow, strained. His palm, bruised.
He fed the energy in smaller portions and moved it where it needed to go.
Joint first because that was the structural piece, then the muscle sheath around it, then the bone bruising at the bottom of the chain.
It took longer than it normally would. Maybe fifteen seconds instead of three.
When he opened his eyes, the pain was gone, his shoulder feeling completely new.
And best of all, he had only spent a quarter of his mana and achieved a full recovery, since he had not wasted energy on parts that did not need it.
"I got it!" Lee flexed his hand. "That’s so much cheaper!" He looked at Rowan for confirmation.
Rowan was watching him with a proud expression, phone already in hand.
"Can you tell the viewers what you just did?" Rowan smiled.
Lee went a little nervous. It was looking increasingly like he had become Rowan’s personal content machine.
"Well... instead of forcing my skill into the body, I slowly directed it to the parts that actually mattered." Lee explained shyly, rolling his shoulder to avoid looking directly at the camera.
"Nice. Let’s go grab something to eat." Rowan did not fully understand why Lee was so shy about it.
The guy looked like a Chinese idol. Glass skin, warm eyes.
’No wonder Cordelia had fallen head over heels for him.’
He was basically the archetypal pretty boy, and while Lee had no idea, Rowan fully intended to use that.
"Yeah, that sound great!"
Lee set the thought aside and stood up.
Over at the chicken wing place across from the hunter district.
Rowan asked for the Mountain Eagle back.
"It’s good, but it might be a bit too much for you right now."
"Agreed."
While Lee wanted to hold onto the gun longer, he knew his limitations. Without Rowan carrying the raid, it would not work in a real scenario.
"It feels kind of wasted on me. And it looks very expensive."
"It’s not wasted, it’s mismatched. And don’t worry about the price."
Rowan brushed Lee’s concern off. He had more than enough money to spare for both of them.
What Lee was doing for him was worth far more than a gun or two.
"Let’s start with a normal gun. Get your fundamentals down, keep leveling up. After that we can talk about stepping up." Rowan rubbed his hands together with excitement.
Just thinking about how far Lee could grow made him eager.
"Should I put points into strength then?" Lee asked.
If the problem was that he could not use it effectively, then he could just raise his strength stats to match it.
"No." Rowan stopped him quickly.
"The gun’s job is to give you damage output, but at the end of the day you are a healer."
Lee laughed. "Okay." He put the stat points he had earned from reaching level 3 entirely into magic.
While watching Rowan dip a wing into sauce, something nagged at him.
It had only taken a morning to gain one level, and that was with Rowan going easy, teaching, and recording along the way.
It had not slowed Rowan down even slightly. There was no scratch on him.
Rowan’s actual clear speed had to be much higher than what he had shown today.
"Just how high is your level?" Lee asked.
"8." Rowan answered honestly.
There was no reason to hide it as long as the conversation stayed away from his class.
"8?!" Lee’s jaw dropped. "You’re higher level than even Cordelia!"
His voice carried to the other tables. People started glancing over.
A level 8 hunter was considered seriously strong.
"Really?" Rowan was genuinely surprised. She was worse off than he had thought.
Maybe he should teach her too.
"Yeah!" Lee noticed the stares and lowered his voice. "It’s only been two days and you’re already level 8. How? Is it something to do with that blue fire from before?"
Lee was not jealous at all. He was already determined to follow Rowan’s path.
He tried to theorize, recalling how Rowan’s shotgun would sometimes ignite in blue flame mid-combat.
Rowan chuckled.
"That’s my secret. But if you follow my method, you could also be at level 8 in just one month."