Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice started a battle in a gladiator style. His goals were to rake in exp, more bore importantly, steal abilities and skills from others!

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

I’m really excited guys! My new chapters have been getting some serious views! My last final was today, so I’m going to start writing this now! There is also a little donation button at the bottom. If you like the story, and want to show monetary support, go ahead! I won’t mind.

This chapter took so long because I just finished up my finals, then was right away hit by the worst cold in all of existence. I’m just now getting over it, so I’m doing this chapter.

First of all, let’s talk about my ring. It was the very same ring of exp I had gotten from winning the game a few months ago.

Ring of ExperienceAccessory TypeRingEnchantment QualityMasterThis ring gives the user a 50% increase in total experience gain. This includes experience from quests, killing, even skill usage. All improvements will become 50% easier.

Once bound, this ring cannot change owners. This ring, once bound, will permanently take up one ring slot. This ring can be unequipped, but will continue to take up one ring slot.

Not Bound

I had already looked it up. A few single use items also increased exp gain for a short period. This ring just did it permanently. Not only do exp gains increase leveling, they also increase skill exp gain.

A few other people, not many at all, also found out that the information flow was allowed. They had created a small underground network. To join it you have to sign a contract saying you won’t tell anyone about the ability to take info from the outside world.

This idea was great in my opinion. A small collection of individuals all working independently as information brokers. All information on the site was usable by all other people on the site. To request a piece of information, you had to give a piece of info worth an equal amount.

Just to get access to the info you had to post something in 24 hours of joining. I posted some basic information about the location of my city. I could get more traffic through my city at the same time as gaining access to an information treasure trove.

My hope was that it might even increase the speed of my purity gains. Seeing as it was an improvement.

Back to the ring. The reason I hadn’t used it yet was because I was debating if I should trade it for the second place prize with EDI. She hadn’t used her scroll yet. So I wanted to think it over.

Apparently she wasn’t holding off on my account. She used it right before the arena battles were announced to the public. Since I had nothing I wanted to trade the ring for, I decided to use it at that moment.

It was sad to think that she wouldn’t think of me before using her scroll. Damn women.

Whatever. I wasted the opportunity to use the ring earlier, but I wouldn’t waste it anymore. I equipped the ring as soon as I sat down.

I watched the duels for the rest of the day. Most of them were filled with people in heavy armor and big swords. Only a few archers, mages, and other types joined. I guess that just represents the population of the game though. Most people were heavy armor sword fighters.

Most of the people here used two handed weapons. That was a big problem for me. If the weapon wasn’t a staff, or knife/dagger, then I’d only be able to use the technique at 15% capacity. I could still use it though.

Most of the techniques were identical. Even those that actually looked to master their weapon had the same techniques. The only discrepancy appeared occasionally. I put that up to the fact that they might have had a secret class.

Different classes had different techniques given to them at the different ranks. More difficult classes could still use the techniques from the low end classes.

After my batter the ‘king’ began announcing the classes of the participants. That was so I’d be able to tell what kind of techniques to expect.

If a knight could obviously use all of their own techniques, as well as the techniques of a warrior. A dragon knight could also use the techniques of a warrior, and even those of a knight. They could also use dragon knight techniques. But knights couldn’t use dragon knight techniques.

Unless they had a way to steal like me. Just by learning the dragon knight techniques, a knight would be able to level up as a dragon knight.

Most of the people wanted to show off, so I quickly learned all of the techniques from different classes.

From the first rank of classes I got the techniques from: fighter and archer. From the second rank I got techniques from: warrior, rouge, thief, ranger, sniper, and assassin. From the third rank I got techs from: gladiator.

No third rank archers showed up. Now I didn’t get all of the techniques from all of those classes. I only got a % from learning one or more techniques from each of those classes. The fighter and archer classes I did master the techniques from though.

They were the simplest, and also the least powerful. The were just basic things like ‘slash’, ‘stab’, ‘parry’, etc. Too bad I couldn’t steal skills. Yes I had already tried fusing my skills involving skill mastery to technique thief.

The only other techniques I fully learned was ‘dash’. It was a slightly superior form of my speed boost spell.

I was, quite rudely, told by the system that I have to increase the rank of my skill mastery to at least expert to do that.

The only fight I paid close attention to was EDI’s.

She was wielding two daggers, and wore light leather armor.

Her opponent was an archer, which wasn’t the best for her. Since they had to enter the arena at the same time, stealth was useless. Since she had to fight without the over powered Sai, she was at less of an advantage than usual.

Once the battle started EDI dashed forward. I gained 15% to the super dash ability.

The archer pelted her with arrows, but she swiftly evaded them all. The archer was shooting arrows like a railgun. The stream never stopped. Her quiver of arrows was quickly dwindling though. As soon as the quiver was empty, EDI stopped evading, and dashed towards the archer.

The archer waved her hand, and the arrows began floating back towards her.

I gained 7.5% to the ‘return’ techniques. A technique that allows the user to gather items they had thrown, as long as they are not broken.

It was supposed to be a class specific technique for the ranger, but my skill made it class and Voice specific.

Messages were not allowed within the arena. I talked to EDITOR about that, and got it established. For some reason EDITOR seemed to be trying to be nicer to me recently. I’d milk that for all it’s worth.

When the archer girl got her arrows back, she started her volley over again. EDI was forced back a bit, but still made ground slowly.

This repeated for a while. Eventually EDI managed to get close enough to attack. It was over at that point. The poor archer girl was slashed across her eye. Not enough to permanently damage it, but I knew what EDI had wanted to do. She’s a little messed up.

The match was over after that.

The rest of the matches weren’t worth talking about. Although the gladiator was interesting. He completely annihilated his opponent. With only one stroke of his large two-handed double-bladed war-axe he took down his opponents health to one. Exactly one.

No dismembering, no intentional killing. He won by as much as he could get away with. His technique made me drool.

It was called ‘Life Spare’. I only got 1.5% of it. The more powerful a technique, the longer it takes me to learn it. The fact that I only got 1.5 shows how powerful it is!

After all of the matches were over, the participants were allowed to wander the town. They could even leave. We were all warned that if we didn’t return before the next day’s matches started, it was considered a forfeit.

My level hadn’t risen, but that was ok. The big level raise would happen tomorrow. First we needed to weed out the weak people, then we could really get started.

By the end of the first day, we were left with 60 participants. We would have five matches the second day. The first four matches would each have 15 people in a battle royal type fight. The last match would be a battle royale with the four winners. The participants in the final battle would be graded according to criteria, and the top three people would be announced by the ‘king’.

I already said I had help from EDITOR right? Well that is mostly because I had EDI ask for it. I convinced EDI to ask for one more thing as well. In the battle royale, all of the exp gains would go to the winner.

Even if the winner only beat one person, they would get all of the experience for winning.

That’s how I was going to level up. Not to mention what I was planning on doing tonight.

After everyone had been sent out of the arena, I went back in as the king, that is not disguised as ChilledFlame.

I began inscribing the walls of the colosseum. This time I had to actually have Ancestor’s help. Ancestor doesn’t speak much anymore. The voice only appears when I directly call. Sometimes Ancestor even seems distracted.

I asked about a few words in the Ancient Elven language. Some of the words are extremely hard to write. Although I know what it is supposed to look like, I don’t want to mess it up.

So I had help.

The words I wrote were: multiplied experience.

I should have thought of this earlier, but I was a little rushed with everything going on. The new inscriptions increased the total amount of experience gained while in the arena. It seemed to also drain a bit of power from the endurance enchantment.

Turns out that the colosseum can only hold so many enchantments. Each new type of enchantment will decrease the power of the ones before it. The endurance enchantment dropped to half, but it was worth it.

Anyone fighting in the arena would gain a whopping 10x experience! For me that totaled to 15x! Now THAT’S what I’m talking about. And yes, fighting without killing still gave exp. Just ‘defeating’ you opponent would give the exp. Killing is just the simplest method.

If I made the arena nothing but exp gain, it would probably go to 20x, 30 for me. I can’t tell you how tempting it was to do that. I mean 30x exp!? I can just fix the damn arena for that much! I decided not to though. It’s not like I was the only one that would benefit from it.

Why should I put in extra work so others could gain more from it?

So I just went with the 15x exp. It was still a lot. I could throw that enchant on gear, but it would only increase exp gain by 1% at most. Even when completely covering a metal cuirass. The ring was some sort of super-enchant.

Also, I contacted Susan. Since she was already helping me, it wasn’t a difficult task to convince her to help me a bit further.

To Susan I gave a few special poisons. The poison was a single drop of the poison from Moro, distilled into a gallon of water. That was enough to fill 32 potion bottles. The poisons were still very effective. They would cause minor hallucinations, and a weak paralytic effect in the body.

I decided to sell each poison for 1 gold. That is a lot for poisons, even for one of the caliber I made. It was the only poison the participants would have access to though. I only needed 100 mana to restore that one drop.

By the time I was done with everything, I only had ten hours before the battles. I went to the castle and fell asleep.

Next Day:

I woke up and disguised myself before sneaking out of the castle. I somehow managed to get chosen for the first battle again. EDI also just happened to be in a different group. I didn’t want us to have to compete until the finals.

We had to be at the arena an hour before the matches started.

We were given the chance to switch weapons and armor, and buy things from the vendors. Of course we’d have to pay for the new equipment. I was fine with mine, but a lot of others had theirs changed or enchanted. I don’t know who, but there was that one other enchanter.

I really want to find out who they are. I might be able to steal some ideas from them. Only Evan and Susan were able to enchant the items. I helped Susan do her enchanting. The other enchanter helped Evan. I made sure to match my enchantment levels to what the other was capable of. He/She was obviously a friend of Evan at least.

Some of the other merchants even accepted orders and begged Susan or Evan to enchant the gear. I didn’t have a problem with it, especially since they both agreed to charge 50% off the top.

Evan explained the rules to the rest of the people, after we had all chosen our equipment. Blah blah blah, last one standing. Blah blah blah doesn’t matter how many kills you get.

I’ve already explained how it works.

I was in a battle with a bunch on n00bs. To be honest. They all just ran into the middle to kill each other. I stood off to the side and watched.

At least until one of the goons noticed I was the only one not getting in the battle. He charged right at me.

I easily parried him. The techniques I stole completely yesterday weren’t great, but they helped my inspect out. The parry technique consumed stamina, but automatically parried to the best of my ability. With inspect that ability was pretty high.

The technique was made with a fusion of wind and earth mana. I could probably reproduce it fairly easily, but I chose to use the actual technique. I wanted to seem like an actual swordsman.

He slashed at me repeatedly. Upward strike, horizontal, vertical. I easily parried each one. Seriously, inspect is overpowered.

After a few seconds of battling him I realized something. I hadn’t been watching the others! This guy wasn’t even using techniques, I was missing out!

I looked for the biggest red line on his body, and struck at hit. He was ready for me though. He blocked it, and sneered at me.

“All your good for is blocking. Now die!”

He gripped his sword in both hands, and sliced down at me. I threw myself to the left with wind mana. Instead of flying for a few yards, I quickly hit another wind mana wall I had summoned. I was thrown to the left again.

I hit a third wind wall, and finally came to a stop. I stabbed out. The wind walls had perfectly positioned me behind the man. I put my sword around his neck.

He stood there for a second, the shouted, “I surrender!”

Without hesitation I turned around, to watch the others battling. The man that had just surrendered left the arena with his head hung low.

My technique thief couldn’t cope with 15 people all battling at once. I began watching their battle. I noticed my attention getting drawn to certain parts, then I’d have to pull myself away to look at the entire picture. This process repeated multiple times.

I stole a few moves, but not many. They weren’t the best moves ever. Although the ‘double jump’ was pretty cool. It allowed the user to jump while in the air. Only once though. Once they hit the ground they could do another double jump.

I didn’t really need this move thanks to my shoes, but the move itself was pretty cool. The only draw back was the after effect. If one jumped too high with it, they would end up taking all of the fall damage.

Occasionally there were one or two people that noticed I wasn’t participating in the fighting. When they would rush me, I’d take care of them.

The majority of the people were taken care of by a strange fellow. He was the one that used the double jump. He also seemed to use various moves to get behind his enemies. Even without inspect I could see he was some sort of assassin class.

He wore a tight, pale outfit. It was form fitting. He had a dark red mask on his face. There were holes for the mouth, eyes, and nose. I knew he was a man because of the bulge at his crotch. It was obvious. Like he wanted people to look at it. I thought for a moment he might be a she, but with no breasts to speak of… not likely.

Like I mean literally no breasts. Not even a small amount which all girls that went through puberty have. His chiseled abs did show through. He was definitely fit.

With inspect I could tell he was a ‘Daylight Assassin’. I could only assume that meant he specialized in killing targets during the day.

He was really good. Most of the people eventually focused on taking him out. He had to drink all of his potions to keep up with the others. There were over ten people striking at him at any one time.

I got some % from some of his skills, but didn’t learn any except the double jump. He was actually very interesting to watch.

His fighting techniques looked like real life ones. He would parry an attack, then force the attacker into another. Occasionally even hurting one or both in the process. He would easily dodge attacks, even those from behind.

He jumped over swords, slid past arrows. Dude looked like a badass.

Eventually he got it down to only two others, not including me. They seemed to have good teamwork though, so it was going to be hard for him.

He glanced at me, most likely to make sure I wouldn’t try anything. I smiled and used my wind mana. I tossed him a potion, one of the minor potions I had gotten from Susan while enchanting stuff for her. I hadn’t planned to use them like this, but I wouldn’t turn down a good opportunity.

Crimson, the Daylight Assassin, was on his last leg. His hp was down to 10%, his stamina was basically at zero, but slowly healing, his overall battle capabilities were next to none.

After inspecting Crimson, I got a notification saying my inspect went up 10% for inspecting a thousand things. If I had to inspect a thousand things for every 10% I would be stuck at Expert level forever!

Restorative * UncommonMaterial QualityUncommonWork QualityAdeptBase Restoration15 + 3/s for 5 secondsThis potion was created by a powerful alchemist throwing ingredients together haphazardly. This potion was made by fusing multiple potions together in an alchemic feat rarely heard of.

This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers.

This potion heals a total of 171.9 points instantly, and an additional 171.9 over the next 5 seconds. Half of these values are health, and half are stamina

Even when I just threw ingredients together, I ended up with a decent potion. I threw it to the guy using a wind arc. The potion sailed through the air. The two people that were fighting Crimson obviously thought it was some sort of poison or explosive.

They smiled smugly as it came down. They looked with disdain at the man the potion was aimed at.

Susan had already spread word about the poisons I made, although she claimed credit. Each poison cost an arm and a leg. These guys obviously thought I had thrown at least something that powerful.

The bottle, contrary to their belief, landed harmlessly in Crimson’s hand. Even Crimson was taken by surprise. Crimson was done either way. I didn’t know if he’d take the chance, and drink the potion, but if he did it’d play perfectly into my hand.

He decided to take the chance. Lucky me. Hehe.

He drank the potion. The other two enemies, seeing that my bottle hadn’t killed him, glared at me. They instantly rushed Crimson.

It was a bit too late though. With boost from the potion, Crimson was able move far enough away from the duo to regain some of his composure. After a few moments of dodging their attacks, he had regained most of his health and stamina.

He really fought well.

After that he dived right back in to the battle. His duel swords matched every strike against him. He was blocking them without seemingly any effort.

A small hitch in one of the duo’s step, caused by my earth mana, was all he needed to get an advantage. He took that opportunity, and pounced on the one that was off balance.

The other member of the duo yelled when he saw this. He went to slice down at Crimson’s head, even as Crimson attacked the other person.

Apparently that was a feint by Crimson though. At least half of it was.

One sword was at the neck of the person that fell, the other at the neck of the man behind Crimson. The three stood completely still for a moment. Then the person that had Crimson pinned down sighed sadly.

He let his sword drop to the ground. Or rather he couldn’t stop it. His arms began to tremble and lose the ability to be able to control themselves. His legs went weak, and he fell to the ground. At least the ground was a little moist there, to cushion his fall. It wasn’t moist a second ago…

The skill Crimson used was Terror. I only learned it up to .5%! I had to dual wield swords to properly use it though.

Crimson looked at me, and gave a slight bow. “Many thanks for the assistance.”

I threw another of the healing potions. “Drink. I want to fight you at your best.” I had a bit of regret in my eyes as the potion flew through the air. Some of the crowd began to boo. It was only an act of charity. Is that so rare in fights like this? To have honor? Does honor not have a place in the arena?

When the vial landed in Crimson’s hand, he opened it, and took a sniff. He didn’t fully trust me. Smart move. I wouldn’t trust me.

After making sure nothing was wrong with the potion, he downed it in one gulp. A second later he sat down. He closed his eyes, and concentrated on healing.

Too bad he didn’t get the chance to finish. I casually walked over to him. I pushed him over. He easily fell.

Idiot shouldn’t have drank that. Some of the crowd had booed, because I had messed with the potion while he wasn’t watching. I had put a pure drop of my poison in it. The one that paralyzed and caused hallucinations.

I used disguise on the potion itself, to make it look like the other potion I had sent him. It was the same, but with one drop different. I also used my nature/wind mana to enhance the smell of the potion, while decreasing the smell of the poison.

Even if he had poison resistance, as all good assassins should, he wouldn’t be able to resist my poison.

I put a sword to his neck, and looked calmly at the king.

The king whispered to someone. A healer quickly appeared. After a moment the healer spoke. “NOT DEAD!”

The king nodded. “The winner, by defeating the final opponent… CHILLED FLAME!”

My level shot up with the massive amount of exp.

Spoiler :

Stats WindowNameChilledFlameClassWarrior MageRaceHumanRacial ClassHuman SubjectLevel 48Health: 100Mana: 3430[6174]Stamina: 500Current Title: SurgeonHealth Regen: 1/sMana Regen: 51.4(46.4)/sStamina Regen: 5.1/sStrength65Agility50Wisdom257Intelligence343Endurance59Dexterity50Luck0Vitality50Charisma35Compassion105Leadership67Logic28Piety89Unused Stat Points21Fame1685

Skills WindowSpeed Reading Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00%

Auto Read Novice Level 20 Exp 50.00%Group Skill: Key to Self-Sustained Alchemy Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Long Distance Inspection Expert Level 75 Exp 10.00%

Group Skill: Automatic Nursing Novice Level 20 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Con Artist Novice Level 21 Exp 25.01%

Group Skill: Magical Mastery Expert Level 75 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Skill Mastery Adept Level 50 Exp 21.23%

Group Skill: Tactical Survival Adept Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Group Skill: Tactical Combat Training Adept Level 52 Exp 16.00%

Group Skill: Breakdown Apprentice Level 25 Exp 12.64%

Group Skill: Harvesting Mastery Novice Level 5 Exp 60.43%

Group Skill: Crafting Mastery Apprentice Level 30 Exp 00%

Group Skill: Body Enhancement Adept

Group Skill: Task Master Apprentice Level 50 Exp 00.00%

Affinities WindowLight70%Water75%Wind25%Nature100%Metal50%Earth90%Fire35%Darkness100%

Purities WindowLight10%Water79%Wind15%Nature65%Metal10%Earth80%Fire15%Darkness10%