Frightening Power Of Upgrades
[?Upgrade?]
"Hell, fucking, yeah..." Mateus grinned.
[!Status!
…
Skills:
Name: Martial Art: Septette Wire Art (Section 1 of 4)
Grade: Mortal
Level: 0 → 100 (Max)
Type: Wire
Description: Consists of seven techniques for manipulating wires. The first section is made up of the martial basics of fighting with wires along with the two first wire techniques that are usable to practitioners in the Mortal Realm.
New Effect 1 (Wire Proficiency): Armed combat with Wires increases your Strength and Agility by 500% upto and including at the Saint Stage.
New Technique 1 (The Line): Uses energy to straighten out and sharpen a wire into a thin cutting weapon with a range only limited by the length of the wire.
New Technique 2 (The Snap): Uses energy to endow a wire with the properties of an almost sentient-like whip.
!Upgrade!
Pending:
Mortal Grade Martial Arts (68)]
"Unbelievable," Mateus shook his head, just the slightest bit distraught. "How could it be so easy to max out a Skill so quickly? Level 100 ain't a fucking joke!" He would know, considering he knew the full extent of what he was now capable of.
Granted, getting to Level 100 didn't exactly come free of charge. Mateus still had to pay up with all of the various Wire Arts he had consumed except for the Septette Wire Art itself, and even then he needed to sacrifice more than a dozen other types of Martial Arts to max out his only worthwhile Skill's Level. But, still…
He picked up a coiled up set of Fractured Spirit Wire and situated it like a bracelet on his right hand. Instinctively he summoned his energy in accordance with the Septette Wire Art's instructions and like a grandmaster with over ten-thousand hours invested in its practice, the wire began to uncoil and float around him.
With a pulse of energy, the wire instantly straight out into a ten-meter long line, but Mateus still had some doubts.
'500% increase to my Agility and Strength?' He thought skeptically as he held the almost invisibly thin and straightened wire between his thumb and forefinger. 'Please,' he rolled his eyes at that particular effect as he subconsciously turned over his hands and thought, 'Like holding some thin piece of metal will make me six times stronger than normal.'
He looked at the wire in his hands with eyes full of doubt, until he noticed that with the way his hand had been turned…
"What..." He couldn't even summon the intonation to phrase his question appropriately.
The wire had apparently straightened up and reinforced itself to such an unbelievable extent that it had cut into the ground. Moreover… it did so with such little resistance that Mateus didn't even notice he had used the wire to slice into the floor like a hot knife through butter.
Mateus was now completely sure of two things: "Level 100 Skills are fucking scary," he muttered, before adding, "and Upgrading is bullshit..."
'For fuck's sake, my Cultivation Base is still only Level 1, right?' He thought callously.
He nervously recalled the wire into its coiled state before moving on to the other part of the final assessment. He still needed to test his aptitude for Secondary Occupations; "his," being read as "his cheat's," of course…
He wasted no time in absorbing another pile of scrolls before sitting down and debating once again, what type of cultivator he wanted to be.
There was always the go-to Fighting Cultivator, whose focus was placed solely in cultivating their Martial Arts and Cultivation base. However…
Alternatively, he could opt for the route of becoming an Alchemist who could take spiritual herbs and treasures and refining bullshit pills out of them. Spiritual Cooks did the same thing, only their products were actually palatable and had long term effects instead of instantaneous, short-lived benefits.
Then there were Talisman Incribers and Array Formation Masters that could make use of "scribbles" to record magical abilities and all sorts of other seemingly impossible feats. The difference between them was the fact that Inscribers tended to work with a pen and canvas, making use of small and compact "scribbles," while Array Formation Master operated inversely with disks and markers, "scribbling" upon surfaces as large as a country in some cases.
Of course, there was always the option to become a Beast Tamer and raise one's own army of supernatural monsters. Even if all of a Beast Tamer's time was placed in raising a single partner, they would effectively be at least doubling their overall combat prowess, if not raising their companion's strength far and above their own.
"Welp, becoming a Spiritual Smith is immediately off the table," Mateus muttered as he almost instantly found he could consume raw ores and refined spiritual metals to upgrade his wires. He simply had no need to learn the art of making new weapons if he could just continue to upgrade what he had.
"Beast Taming would take too much effort," he didn't want to waste time looking for monsters to tame. "Inscriptions and Arrays seem too complicated, and Cooking just doesn't sound like something I'd like to get into," he continued to whine…
"Alchemy, however..." He paused, his face taking on a constipated expression, "It could be nice and all, but… I already decided to main as a Water Cultivator and Water Qi is quite literally the worst of all energy types for Alchemy."
As true as his claims were, the fact remained that amidst the dozens and dozens of Alchemical Methods he had consumed several were made for the express purpose of giving Water Cultivators a way to become Alchemists; the Ephemeral Slipstream Sect was a Water Type Sect after all…
Moreover, even though Fire and Wood Qi would be infinitely better energy types to use for alchemical purposes, the fact remained that it was more than possible to become a successful Alchemist even if one only had Affinity for Water; it would just be unforgivingly harder and take an unbearably long time.
Unless, of course…
[!Upgrade!
Name: Herbal Essence Extraction Theory
Grade: Mortal (Mortal/Spirit)
Level: 0
Type: Water Alchemy Cultivation Method
Description: An unorthodox Alchemy Cultivation Method that allows a Water Cultivator to concoct alchemical pills without a fire. A pill furnace is still needed and the margin of error while conducting alchemy is countless times stricter than most alchemy cultivation methods.
Current Effect: No effect at level 0
Cost:
!Consume!
Water Type Mortal Grade Alchemy Cultivation Methods (10)
Effect: Increase Skill Level by 5 (potential of 50 total)
Water Type Mortal/Spirit Grade Alchemy Cultivation Methods (5)
Effect: Increase Skill Level by 10 (potential of 50 total)
Non-Water Type Mortal Grade Alchemy Cultivation Methods (59)
Effect: Increase Skill Level by 1 (potential of 59 total)
Non-Water Type Mortal/Spirit Grade Alchemy Cultivation Methods (101)
Effect: Increase Skill Level by 3 (potential of 303 total)]
Mateus shrugged his shoulders, "Eh, why not?"