A smile washed over me as I was finally free to contemplate what I’ve achieved. I had successfully achieved a complete set of equipment made out of growth items. This made me the most powerful character in the game, and meant that any gear I gained in the future could go to developing the guild or could be sold for funds. I knew the gear wouldn’t level with trash tier items forever, but I also knew it was a long time before the gear became difficult to level. To my knowledge the items sacrificed never had a level minimum meaning that I could always get rid of obsolete gear. I interrupted my celebrations to focus on making progress.

I teleported back to the capital city, the only city with a teleportation gate powerful enough to travel between kingdoms and continents. I had a few things to take care of before teleporting however. First I went to the auction house, and picked up my spoils. The sale of bronze equipment had peaked, this time I had earned only 8000 gold coins. Still a lot more than they’d be worth in even a single day, but less than before. I checked the auction house for magic crystals and found none. I couldn’t auction anything as I was leaving shortly. Before leaving, I attempted to turn in the road quest. Unfortunately, the reward was only a small amount of Kingdom reputation, something I wouldn’t need in Orleans for a long long time.

I next had to decide how greedy I wanted to be. Did I want to go to any other kingdoms before Verdure? Teleportation to a kingdom near Orleans was only 1000 gold, and I still knew a few secrets in neighboring kingdoms that could be valuable. If I waited too long I might miss out on getting one of the powerful elemental legacies available in Verdure however. Perhaps greed got the better of me, but with time manipulation I knew that the Kingdom of Aquitalia was where I should go next. If things went to plan, I’d only stay there long enough for one auction and one divine trial.

The divine trials in Aquitalia focused on crafting, and the one I was most interested in enabled me to get a divine flame: the tribulation flame. Divine flames were mostly used in alchemy and forging, but could also be used offensively or defensively if one learnt the appropriate flame skills or techniques. The tribulation flame was located in a divine tier 2 crafting trial, something I was confident no one could pass. Being a divine flame trial, one needed to be skilled in both alchemy and forging to get through it. I suspected I had the highest skill in the world at both as I got the unique items for completing the ranks, and there had not been any announcement for journeyman as yet. I committed to spending up to 10 hours in Aquitalia, paying 1000 gold to teleport to the capital.

Once there I took in the capital. I bought out the rare crafting ingredients I needed for arrays, as well as crafting ingredients for my iron tier gear. I auctioned the last 25 of each bronze item on an eight hour time limit. I went for gold, which despite the hardness of earning would still be more plentiful and spent more easily than magical crystals. I did however, decide to auction 25 of each iron gear at the magic crystal auction shop, for 1 magic crystal each minimum. I wasn’t sure if they’d sell, but if any did it would help me greatly. If they didn’t I could always sell them for gold in Verdure.

After completing my tasks in the capital city of Aquilia, I set out on the 2-hour journey to the divine trial. Aquitalia was directly to the north of Orleans, and it had reached the late fall. The trees were no longer pretty as the leaves had mostly fallen. As I headed further north, the green returned as the pattern of the forests shifted towards evergreen varieties. Finally, I reached the level 18 zone in which the trial was hidden. With my high agility and movement speed tier bonus I was easily able to avoid the enemies, eventually finding the gate in a meadow deep inside the evergreen forest. I stepped inside and encountered a trial rather different than the rest.

Instead of a staircase, there was a room consisting of an alchemical workshop and a forge. The heat from the forge was intense and I had to use mana to control my body temperature lest I sweat profusely. Instead of the normal trial spirit, there was a semi-corporeal old man. He played with his white mustache and beard as he spoke. “This divine trial is one of forging and alchemy. At each stage you will be given a recipe and will have five attempts to successfully produce it. Should you fail to craft an item your trial is over. We will alternate between forging and alchemy. Save for the ultimate reward, your only rewards will be the recipes you learn. Each task has a 1-hour time limit.

I equipped my forgers belt, medallion and hammer, confident that between my manual skill at crafting honed over 15 years in the past together with my item bonuses I could succeed. Sure enough, the first item, a common shield was produced in 1 attempt. I switched to my alchemy equipment and made the common stinkbomb potion out of stinkweed in a single attempt as well. This continued for some time, until we had covered common recipes from level 1 to level 10 in both forging and alchemy, with each trial taking a mere 5 minutes. We started again with bronze items, going from level 1 to level 10 once more. On the higher-level bronze items I had an occasional failure. Nonetheless, I kept the average time per success to around 8 minutes. We moved on to iron-items, everything went smoothly until level 8 where I failed the first two attempts at making an iron plate helm. I succeeded on the third however, and the trial continued. I was lucky that the level 8 and level 9 items were a mana potion and health potion respectively. Those recipes were useful as the NPC prices for those potions were heavily inflated. I persevered and reached the level 10 forging challenge. In it I had to create a complete set of armor for a set called Tank’s armor. It had unusually high defense and MDef for an iron-tier equipment, rising almost to the quality of silver tier equipment. The set bonus gave a Def and MDef multiplier, reaching 1.75x if one had the full set equipped. It was ideal gear for tanks, and gave me something quite good to sell once more people had reached level 10. I completed it successfully. Upon completion I got my next set of world announcements.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Eternity’s Wake to reach Journeyman Forger. Rewarding with 1 Forger’s Hammer (Silver Tier) and 160,000,000 XP.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Altaea to reach Journeyman Forger. Rewarding with 1 Forger’s Medallion (Iron Tier) and 80,000,000 XP.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Aquitalia to reach Journeyman Forger. Rewarding with 1 Forger’s Belt (Bronze Tier) and 40,000,000 XP.

The experience was enough to give me level 11, and I continued to improve my agility. Before handing in my completed set equipment I sat down and spent most of the remaining time working on my level 9 iron potion recipe. I had bought up the mana potion ingredients as I fully expected their value to increase over time, but instead I started making mana potions myself. Near the time limit, I handed the set equipment in and went on to the iron-tier level 10 alchemy challenge. I struggled to complete that one burning through 3 sets of ingredients before succeeding on the 4th try. I had run out of mana potion ingredients, so I did something similar with health potions. Finally, I succeeded in getting the announcement I was waiting for.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Eternity’s Wake to reach Journeyman Alchemist. Rewarding with 1 Alchemist’s Tools (Silver Tier) and 160,000,000 XP.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Altaea to reach Journeyman Alchemist. Rewarding with 1 Alchemist’s Medallion (Iron Tier) and 80,000,000 XP.

Congratulations to Corwin Swordborn for being the first in Aquitalia to reach Journeyman Alchemist. Rewarding with 1 Alchemist’s Belt (Bronze Tier) and 40,000,000 XP.

With my journeyman level and improved tier of support gear, I moved on to challenging the silver recipes. Everything went smoothly until level 9, where I spoiled 3 sets of ingredients in forging. My 4th try produce a flawed success, resulting in an iron-tier item. I was down to my last attempt. Fortunately, I realized what I was doing wrong and corrected it on the last attempt. Unfortunately, time was running low. I finished forging the equipment with 3 seconds left, and leapt over the table sprinting to hand it in. Only my high agility and movement tier improvement saved me as I completed the trial with less than 1 second left.

When I reached the level 9 alchemy challenge I was floored. The item I had to brew was actually the intermediate mana potion. This recipe was extremely valuable, and I was planning to take some dangerous risks in order to get it early. Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to. I was very familiar with this potion, having brewed it many times in the past, I thus succeeded on the first try.

The level 10 forging challenge was another set. It took me two failures to understand what I was doing wrong. Unfortunately, the next two successes were flawed, giving me only iron-tier items. I was down to my last try. Would it all end here? I knew they wouldn’t be giving away gold tier recipes so I was down to the bitter end. I poured my heart and soul into my forging and scraped by with a final success. I once again had seconds to spare, although this time it wasn’t so dramatic that I needed to leap the table.

The level 10 alchemy challenge was an anticlimax. I was required to brew the intermediate health potion. This was one of the potions I had brewed most frequently in the first year of the game. Brewing it was straightforward for me an I succeeded on the first try.

I thus, completed the divine trial and earned the tribulation flame. With my high fire affinity I was confident and integrated it into my body immediately. My normal temperature permanently became a few degrees hotter as my fire affinity improved further. I was ready for Verdure now.

Corwin Swordborn

Spoiler : Level 11: 51% of level 12

Str: 1801(base:25)

Agi: 1866 (base:70)

Con:1801 (base:25)

Int: 601 (base:25)

Cha: 601 (base:25)

Lck: 217 (base:25)

Cnc: 217 (base:25)

Sta: 217 (base: 25)

Qi: 217 (base: 20)

Soul: 217 (base:20)

Air Affinity: 217 (base:20)

Fire Affinity: 217 (base:20)

Def: 5593

MDef: 4251

HP:21911/21911 (base: 1000)

MP:8711/8711 (base: 1000)

Gear:

MW: Epic Tier Level 12 Longsword, +192Str +192Agi +192Con

Base Damage: 240-288, Def 288 MDef 240 Durability 201/384, Requirements: 384 Str

OW: Epic Tier Level 12 Shortsword +192Str, +192Agi, +192 Con

Base Damage 196-240, Def 240 MDef 196, Durability 198/384, Requirements: 384 Str

MA: Epic Tier Level 12 Plate, +192 Str, +192 Agi, +192 Con

768Def,768MDef, Durability 96/96, Requirements:96 Str

LA: Silver Tier Level 12 Plate Cuisse, +48Str, +48Agi, +48Con

192Def, 192MDef Durability: 96/96 Requirements: 96 Str

G: Currently Epic, Level 12 +192Str, +192 Agi, +192 Con

768Def, 768MDef, Durability 370/386 Requirements: 386 Str

B:Epic Tier Level 12 Plate Boots +192Str +202Agi(10 Gemstone) +192Con

768 Def, 768MDef Durability 368/386 Requirements: 386Str

H: Epic Tier Level 12 Helm, +192 Str, +202(10 Gemstone) Agi, +192 Con

768 Def, 768MDef Durability 372/386, Requirements: 386Str

RR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Hidden Attributes (+192 All base attributes, +192 All Hidden Attributes)

LR: Epic Tier, Level 12 Ring of Elements (+192 All base attributes,

Ignore 2.4 Levels, Ignore 2.4 Equip Levels

AM: Epic Tier, Level 12 Amulet (+192 All base attributes)

Skills:

Time Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 9

Space Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 9

Air Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 9

Earth Manipulation, Special, Tier 0 Level 9

Fire Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Water Manipulation, Special, Tier 0, Level 0

Thunder Slash, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Wave Chop, Rare, Tier 0, Level 0

Wind Charge, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Disrupting Blow, Rare, Tier 0, Level 1

Double Slash, Uncommon, Tier 0, Level 2

Slash, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Pierce, Common, Tier 0, Level 2

Parry, Common, Tier 0, Level 2