“Thank you for the items that you’re delivering to me,” Blacksmith Sumuel said. "Hard to find these items in our mines. It's a good thing that the Hunt was able to reach other places on this mountain to extract these materials."

I have just returned from the end of the Hunt. I was barely able to catch up with the main group of players mining all sorts of things in places where we normally couldn’t reach without having a large party made up of strong players. Maybe those mineral veins that ran on the surface of the mountain only appeared when a large Hunt was initiated? I haven't seen places like those on the mountain before.

Most of the Miner class players joined as well. They didn't participate much during the harvesting and the hunting phase but they came for the last phase of the mission. Of course, they had the advantage in that part of the Hunt, being able to spot higher level ores, the ability to refine them, and faster extraction rates. I had to content myself with the scraps. But it wasn’t so bad. I was actually expecting that I wouldn’t get anything because there were so many players who showed up at the lodes.

“I hope you make good use of those,” I said.

Sumuel nodded. “As for payment, you want me to do the usual? I will use half of them to make you something? What gear do you want?”

I raised my brow when he said 'the usual'. Do these NPCs remember me my previous conversations and dealings with them? I said, "What options do I have?"

This was my preferred way of dealing with Sumuel. I had a high relationship status with him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take him on a date yet. Maybe I would be able to unlock that option someday. Kidding aside, in my experience, it was way better to have him make you some stuff for payment rather than getting rings or currency and use that to buy gear, either from him or from other players. He was a high-level blacksmith, better than most player blacksmiths, and I should take advantage of that.

And I wasn’t familiar enough with any good blacksmith players to haggle with them.

There were several choices that popped up in front of me. I was going to choose gear to replace the old ones that I have that I wasn’t able to replace previously. I wanted to have all uncommon gear and above before we set out for the Ice Tunnel. The high-level players were already planning for it and scheduling it next week. I think there was going to be a double loot drop rate event next week, something to celebrate a new area discovered by the players. It was a pretty important area for the story line. I should visit their site often for updates.

Previously, before I set out to join the Hunt, I was able to buy a good Helmet, Arm-guards, Gloves, Shoulder plates, and chest armor. These were the parts for my upper body. I made sure they had the effects that I wanted, health, Vitality, more armor, some kind of return damage. All the armor parts I had for my upper body were uncommon, or more commonly known as blue items, items that had effects besides just giving armor.

The cost amounted to more than I expected. I didn’t have much money left for my lower body armor. I bought a simple croupiere, that was the armor for protecting my horsey ass, a common flanchard, for my sides, and armor for my legs. All my lower body armor were common items, except for the one enchanted item, or green item, that I had, my hoof boots and my old peytral, which was an uncommon item.

I didn’t buy a new spear or shield then. It seemed like a waste to buy a common spear and shield just for the sake of buying new items. My damage mostly came from passive damage sources and my protection was the Pyro Shell, so I didn’t bother upgrading my shield and spear, reasoning that I was going to change them after the Hunt when I certainly earned a lot of rings from selling my wares to the participants. Instead, I used the money to buy more bottles.

It was a wise investment and I made a lot of sales during the duration of the Hunt.

Now, I wanted a new weapon because I was planning to choose a new skill. An attack one. I pressed the polearm option on the choices floating in front of me and three enchanted polearms appeared. This was going to cost a lot but I had plenty of money. I shouldn't forget to pay Justalyne for the ingredients I borrowed from her. And I still don't know what to do with that weird plant.

I had several plans to make my character stronger. First, I needed a weapon that gave bonuses to physical damage. Of the three choices, one had fire properties while the other two were physical. The one I wanted had flat physical damage and a percentage physical damage increase. I didn’t want the other weapon that had armor piercing and added critical chance.

“I’ll choose this one,” I said to Sumuel. My choice cost a lot of rings, but I wanted it. It was a very good weapon, especially for the build I was planning. And I could make the money back through selling fruits and potions. I made a mental note to go crystamind hunting later to make some bottles.

“Are you sure of your choice?” Sumuel said. “You’ll have to return later while I make it.”

I looked at my choice again.

Brutal Hunting Spear of Viciousness

(Polearm) (One-Hand)

40-56 Base Damage

45/45 Durability

Effects:

+15 Physical Damage

+15% Physical Damage

-33% Critical Rating

-105 Critical Rating

+8 Strength

Passive:

Brutalize: Gather your strength to deal a savage blow to your enemy

10% Chance to gain an additional 65% Physical Damage for your attack.

I bet the deduction to Critical Rating was so that there would be a very low chance of a critical strike and a Brutalize proc happening at the same time. But that didn’t matter to me. It wasn’t like I was doing Crit Build. “Yep,” I said. “I’ll come back for it later.”

I paid upfront and then went to my garden. Beltis and Zaido were outside their home. It looked like Zaido was about to leave for work. Beltis waved happily at me as I approached

Zaido said to me, “Thank you for all the help that you’ve given to us. I really appreciate it.”

“I think the fruits are making Beltis healthier,” I said. Beltis’ leveled up twice. She wasn’t doing anything that could level her up, was she? Or was this just the normal progression of NPCs getting older? So why the two levels? It was fast for somebody doing nothing.

“Yes, she’s more lively these days. And I enjoy the fruits as well. Thank you for keeping my daughter company as well.”

“I’m always happy to help,” I said. “Just tell me if you need anything.”

Zaido paused to think then said, “You already helped us a lot. I don’t know how to pay you back.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “What you have taught me helped me a lot as well. That’s why I’m helping you. What do you want me to do?”

“Maybe you can help me with this,” Zaido said. A prompt for a new quest popped up. It was a collection quest for some plants and various animal parts. “I need the plants and other ingredients for the medicine of my daughter. The Healers of the village would make the medicine, but I need to collect them. And I don’t have time to search for them.”

“Sure, I’ll look for these things,” I said, accepting the quest. “I’ll fix up the garden a bit and then I’ll go for it.”

“I think I can teach you a skill that I learned from the time I was a Hunter-Warrior,” Zaido said. “That is if you are ready for it.”

You better teach me something in return. This was one of the ways to get skills without joining a specific class or profession. I was investing in Zaido to teach me more things. The skills he taught me, [Defense is the Best Offense] and [Pyro Shell] have really helped me.

Zaido galloped away. I followed Beltis to my garden in their backyard. I needed to replenish my stock of health fruits. If it weren’t for those fruits, I would have died plenty of times during the hunt. Maybe I should plant fruits that gave Solar Spirit as well

“Oh wow, there’s so many plants,” I said. Before going away for the Hunt, I harvested nearly all of the plants. Some of them weren’t ripe yet so I just left them alone. It looked like Beltis was harvesting them on her own and then planting some of them. Maybe that was how she leveled up. Still weird.

“Did I do good?”

“You did a great job,” I said, patting her head. I gave her some new and weird fruits that I got during the Hunt. Their seeds were already extracted using my Forager Skill. I was going to try experimenting with them when I have more seeds. Folding my legs beneath me, I opened my skill tree. I just wanted some peace and quiet to choose my skills.

Beltis sat beside me and ate the fruits I gave her. Good thing that Little Pony fucker wasn’t around.

Lvl 1. Ancestral Constitution Rank II

Passive:

0.3% of life regenerated per 5 seconds

Armor: +5%

Fire Resistance: +7%

Physical Resilience Rating: + 150

Magical Resilience Rating: +150

Each time damage is received

Life Regeneration: +10 per second

Solar Spirit Regeneration: +2 per second

Maximum stacks: 3

Duration: 15 seconds per instance

This cost me two skills points to rank up. A good choice, I must say. There were three stars or something like that above the skill with two of them lighted. I figured that it must mean that another rank up was available when I get this to level ten. Magical Resilience has something to do with the chance magical status effects latch on to you and how long their duration was going to be. Physical Resistance was its counterpart, you could resist Bleeding and those kinds of stuff. Vitality and Focus affected Resilience. Some gear could affect it too as well as hidden stats. The consensus of the players in the online forums I have visited was that taking damage during playing also increased it minutely.

I searched the internet for how the skill trees of other races looked like. They were mostly the same with ours. There were bonus nodes, like additional two percent life, and there were skill nodes, both active and passive skills. Skill points were used to move around the tree and the skills were levelled through usage, skill points were only used for unlocking them.

Other races also have rank ups, but they didn’t use their own skill points! The humans have something like Honor Badges awarded by the human emperor or something, I dunno who gave those out. Elves have Spirit stones they pulled out of their ass. Just kidding. They get those through quests or something. The point was, they didn’t use skill points like we did.

I found another troubling fact. Our skills, those not ranked up, more often than not, didn’t scale to late game. Other races would have something like: Fireball, one to ten damage plus ten percent of your intelligence. It would mean that that specific skill would still be useful in the late game because most of its damage would come from a percentage of your stats which would surely rise.

Our skills weren’t like that if you didn’t rank them up. And again, that costed skill points compared to other skill trees. The only visible advantage I saw with our skill tree was that our bonus nodes gave more than other races’. But that wasn’t enough to offset our large disadvantage of spending our skill points to rank up. What the hell is up with that mechanic?

This led me to the conclusion that our skills were monstrous if fully ranked up. Other races only have one rank up, and that was it. But we have two possible rank ups if my hunch was correct. Based on my ranked up [Ancestral Constitution] we get more bonuses if we ranked up and scaling. Scaling was the most important part of a skill; without it, it would, generally, be obsolete when late game comes. If you even could reach late game without skills that scaled.

Given that our race has difficulty, to put it mildly, in leveling up, and our large demand for skill points, I had to be extremely careful of my choices in the skill tree. One thing I know for sure was that when I chose a skill, I better rank it up, except for the skills that already scale, like [Critical Frenzy] and [Kickstart]. Maybe if I had spare points someday, I might rank them up.

I needed my skill points right now for the build I was planning. I wanted to be a tank. Check. I also wanted to be able to kill those who couldn’t kill me. Working on that. And I needed levels. Duh. I also needed to catch up to four months of headstart the top players have. A tall order.

The fastest way to get experience was to kill bosses, and if you have a party you could kill higher level bosses and would net higher experience even if the experience would be divided among your party members. I didn’t have a guild backing me nor did I have friends who I could always count on to party with.

The solution? Be a solo boss killer. I have made builds like this when I played MMORPGs in the past. Sometimes parties would hire me to tank for them when we go for powerful bosses. When no one wanted to hire me, then I soloed weaker bosses.

For that, I needed damage. But I also needed health, armor, all those things, to be a tank and actually survive a boss. If I was going to be economical, I should go for damage skills that scaled off health and other stats needed for tanking. A good example of that skill was my [Defense is the Best Offense] since it gave an increase in damage equal to a small percent of my armor.

I found five skills that used health in their respective formula. One was a passive skill and the others cost health or health and Solar Spirit. One of them was some kind of transfer life something a healer does. Cross that out. One was in the defense cluster of skills. I zoomed out my skill tree to find it because it needed some investment in skill points to reach. The way the skill worked was that I pay with my own life for an AoE damage. Pretty good.

The problem was that I still couldn’t reach it anytime soon with the skill points I have and I also wouldn’t be able to negate the damage it dealt. I would just die along with the monsters I wanted to kill. I needed a large amount of regen, or maybe lifesteal, to regain my life to fuel my AoE damage. Definitely a mid-game skill which would require investment.

Right now, I needed an attack skill based on life now so that I could level and rank it up. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have any damage that could kill boss level monsters. I would simply rely on passive damage effects which weren't that powerful in my present state.

The three skill choices that remained were within reach of the skill points I had. The passive skill was connected to [Critical Frenzy] and was related to its effects.

"I think this is the right choice," I said, as I clicked on a couple of bonus nodes along the way to the passive skill. Then I pressed confirm to lock in my choice. Beltis beside me stood up to tend the plants. I looked at her for a bit before returning to my interface and examining my choice.

Lvl 1. Boiling Blood Savagery- Descended from the divine, Mardukryons do not surrender even if their blood was spilled. Rather, they gain more strength to stand up to their enemy.

Effect: +2 Physical Damage for every 1.5% of Maximum Health lost.

Obviously a very powerful skill. I only didn't get it before because I wasn't initially planning to hack my enemies but rather kill them with passive damage. Unfortunately, I couldn't pull off a passive damage build early game. I was willing to rank this skill up later because I was sure that the physical damage bonus would also increase and be converted to a formula with scaling.

The last two skills with life in their computation were connected to this one and needed a few more points to reach.

One skill was based on life, cost a huge chunk of life but it returned half the health cost if you killed your target. I initially wanted to choose this because the mechanic of the other skill was weird. But after careful consideration, I decided that I was going with the other one.

Since I found this other skill yesterday, I was thinking about if this was the right choice. I wasn't even listening when I attended the JYE meeting. But since I mastered the art of spouting bullshits even if you didn't know what was going on, they didn't suspect that I was planning my build during the meeting.

I stood up and went to harvest my plants. Beltis was picking some fruits. I wanted to plant in a batch with higher quality so might as well harvest them all now. My skill tree was still opened while I harvested. I just sort of absentmindedly picked the fruits while my thoughts were still on the skill I was going to choose.

Lvl. 1 Ignition Blood Pact- Mardukryons use their own blood laced with divine power to strengthen their weapon. With their Solar Spirit, they ignite their blood coated weapon and turn their attack into a magical fiery strike to mow down all their enemies.

Your next three Physical Attacks will deal an additional bonus Physical Damage of 20/40/60. 25 Health is subtracted each time the specific instance of bonus damage is used.

Your Physical Attack is converted to Fire-type Magic Damage before it hits the enemy.

Cost: 40 Solar Spirit

Cooldown: 5 Seconds

My first thought when I saw this was, what a weird ass effect. But when I thought more about it, it was actually a very powerful skill, one worthy of skill points investment to rank up. And this had awesome scaling possibilities late game. First, Health was paid to increase my physical damage each time I attacked, up to three times. The second phase was that my physical attack was going to get turned into a magic fire type attack when I actually hit.

This would actually mean that there would be compounded bonuses here. During the first phase, besides the bonus from sacrificing health, flat physical damage increase from Strength and equipment would affect my attack. This would include the attack from [Defense is the Best Offense] which scaled off my armor and was about fifty additional damage right now. It would also include the bonus from my newly acquired [Boiling Blood Savagery]. All of these would be increased by percentage physical damage increase.

Stuff like armor pierce, puncture, effects which happen upon a physical attack wouldn't trigger, because the damage would become magic.

But! However! Nevertheless! Nonetheless! Insert your chosen word here. It shouldn't be forgotten that the physical attack that became fire magic type would be affected by bonuses connected to that damage type. The entire Physical Attack would get further boosted by things like additional percent fire damage, which I didn't have right now, but I planned to buy an Integral Bit with a bonus like that. And since it was already a magic attack in the second phase, magic penetration, and among others would further boost its power. I also didn't have equipment with magic penetration but I was sure I could get things like those when I get out of the mountain.

This was the beauty of [Ignition Blood Pact]. On its face, you wouldn't see any scaling at all and dismiss as a weird shit skill. However, if you deeply analyzed it, it had enormous scaling potential.

I stopped picking fruits and turned to my interface. I traced the path to the skill I wanted on my skill tree, passing by three bonus nodes "This is right," I said. "Hopefully," I added with a chuckle. I clicked confirm. Then I turned to Beltis. "Help me plant these things," I said. Maybe she was really leveling up through planting. In that case, I should get her to level up more to be healthy.