"Ice Storm! Pouring Hailstone!"

Puck! Puck! Puck!

Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter!

Using Blink, I appeared in the center of the undead that the third herding team had herded for me and immediately used my AOE skills because I could kill more than 100 undead monsters instantly with them.

This time I had no choice but to launch a more intensive attack because my EXP was at 99.98% to the next level right before this round of hunting.

Perhaps that's why a message rang among the falling monsters.

[You have leveled up.]

Of course, it was a message I heard a lot.

However, the reason I felt this message was special was because it announced my level 400.

So, the message didn't end there.

[You have acquired 4 skill points by achieving level 400.

-You can acquire up to four additional skills.]

Having a lot of skills didn't necessarily improve my strength, but it definitely helped.

So, I felt a strong urge to smile in satisfaction, but I held it back because I didn't have to inform Chairman Suh that I had reached level 500.

'Check the time.'

[It is currently 23:54.]

Considering that I always hunted until 1am before logging out, I still had about one more hour left today. If I could have my way, I was really anxious to acquire a new skill right now and match it with a new legendary grade item befitting level 400. Besides, I currently had a total of 6.5 billion golden rings with the addition of the 5 billion golden rings I received the other day.

"Let's go to where the fourth monster herding team is."

With the same voice as usual, I spoke to Director Jinyoung Lee, who always supported me and managed the four monster herding teams in this hunting ground.

"Yes," he replied.

And I continued to hunt for the remaining one hour, as usual.

It's now five minutes to 1am.

"Thanks for your great help today," I said to the members of the fourth monster herding team.

"You're welcome. Actually, we're making a lot of extra income thanks to you, Asirante."

"That's right. We're more grateful to you."

While returning their gratitude to me for giving them all the items including the golden rings dropped by the monsters, I finished hunting for the day.

Then I climbed onto the Teleport Zone in the Tombs of the Dead after them.

"Move to Kotum Castle!"

[You have been moved to Kotum Castle.]

I could acquire skills anywhere where there was a tower in the central square. But since I was the most familiar with Kotum Castle, and it also had an auction house, I immediately moved there without hesitation.

Then I moved straight to the central square because it was more important for me to acquire new skills than items right now. Moreover, I had some skills in mind that I wanted to acquire.

[There are currently ice-type skills that you can acquire.]

[There are currently ice-type skills that you can upgrade.]

As soon as I approached the tower in the central square, a message rang.

'Check skill list.'

So, I checked the list of skills I currently had.

1. Level 3 Ice Ball. (Level 1, 2, 3)

2. Level 3 Ice Bolt. (Level 1, 2, 3)

3. Level 3 Ice Weapon. (Level 1, 2, 3)

4. Level 3 Ice Shield. (Level 1, 3, 5, 7)

5. Minor Frostbite Occurrence (Passive.)

6. Level 2 Ice Field. (Level 2, 5, 7)

7. Level 4 Pouring Hailstone. (Level 2, 4, 6, 8)

8. Level 4 Ice Blast. (Level 2, 4, 6)

9. Level 3 Multiple Ice Arrow. (Levels 2, 3, 5)

10. Level 3 Ice Prison. (Level 3, 5, 7)

11. Level 3 Thin Ice. (Level 3.)

12. Level 4 Ice Spear. (Level 3, 4, 6)

13. Level 4 Blink. (Level 4, 6)

14. Level 4 Ice Storm. (Level 4, 7, 8)

I currently have a total of 14 skills.

Because of one of them, I have been looking forward to achieving level 400 all the more.

In other words, I now can finally upgrade level 2 Ice Field to level 5, thanks to achieving level 400.

So, I upgraded all the skills that could be upgraded to level 5, including Ice Field.

[Would you like to upgrade level 3 Ice Shield to level 5 Ice Shield?]

[Would you like to upgrade level 2 Ice Field to level 5 Ice Field?]

[Would you like to upgrade level 3 Multiple Ice Arrow to level 5 Multiple Ice Arrow?]

[Would you like to upgrade level 3 Ice Prison to level 5 Ice Prison?]

"Upgrade them all."

Of course, leveling these skills up to level 5 will increase their power, but their cooldown will also inevitably rise.

However, I could confidently say that I had faster cooldowns for the Ice-type skills than anyone else, and this time I was thinking of learning new passive skills because of this new cooldown increase. So, I chose to upgrade all of them without any hesitation.

As soon as I was done upgrading the four skills to level 5, I searched for a new skill to acquire this time.

[Level 5 Ice Rain (active, requires 3 skill points, requires 1,200,000 golden rings)

: Creates a rain of ice in a certain range.

: Only level 5 Ice Rain exists.]

This kind of skill was not useful because it started and ended at level 5.

Besides, considering that other signature AOE skills such as Ice Field, Pouring Hailstone, and Ice Storm can be upgraded to level 7, 8, and 8, from starting at level 2, 2 and 4 respectively, the power of skills like Ice Rain is bound to fall significantly later.

Moreover, it required as many as 3 skill points, which was even more than Ice Storm.

Of course, I sometimes used skills because it was not always good to upgrade all the skills to their maximum level.

Anyway, it was very important for me to distribute the cooldown of the skills appropriately because I could not sit idle, helplessly looking at the skills whose cooldown didn't come back quickly.

However, even considering all that, I thought three skill points were a little overkill.

That's why Ice Rain could not be on my favorite skills list.

Furthermore, there was one critical drawback.

'Well, it doesn't exist at level 500 anyway.'

So far, I've acquired Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4 skills when I achieved level 5, 100, 200 and 300 respectively. Now that I have reached level 400, I can acquire level 5 skills. So, according to the rule, it seems that I should be able to acquire level 6 skills at level 500, but there is nothing like that at level 500.

In other words, starting with Level 6 skills, the number of levels required to level up new skills increased from 100 levels to 200 levels.

For example, level 600 is required to acquire level 6 skills, level 800 is required to acquire level 7 skills, and level 1000 is required to acquire level 8 skills.

That's why I was given four skill points this time instead of the usual three. For that reason, I had to pay more attention to my skills, so it was too much for me to use three skill points for only one skill.

'The thing is this skill is definitely useful.'

If I had to single out my signature AOE skills, it would definitely be Pouring Hailstone and Ice Storm. Both of them are level 4, so I have no other way than using them at this level because the next level of Pouring Hailstone is level 6, and the next level of Ice Storm is level 7.

Of course, I can use level 7 Ice Storm by using the legendary grade functional skill ring, but I plan to keep it sealed for the time being.

Anyway, in such a situation, a new level 5 AOE skill will certainly be a big help to me.

'Anyway, I have several single-target skills such as Ice Ball, Ice Bolt, Multiple Ice Arrow, and Ice Sphere.'

In particular, I didn't feel the lack of single-target skills because I could use Ice Ball and Ice Bolt almost without any cooldown. Moreover, when I used these skills, they were not weak enough to be dismissed as simply low-level single-target skills.

'Let me learn this skill.'

So, as I had already made up my mind, I learned how to use level 5 Ice Rain.

I have already used three skill points out of the four I had acquired.

So, I searched for a skill to use the remaining one skill point.

Of course, this was also one of the skills I decided to learn in advance.