7

From previous thoughts, three possibilities crossed Rare's mind.

Firstly, "Mental Magic Mastery" might be one of the requirements.

Secondly, there are further skills in the skill tree such as "Training" and "Summoning".

Thirdly, there is a connection between "Undead", "Training", and "Summoning".

Though there's no strong evidence to support it, Rare has rough clues. In theory, with the experience he currently has, he can perform adequate verification.

However, after investing experience for verification, Rare won't efficiently gather experience in the surrounding area. To gather experience efficiently, he must move to fight enemies equal to or higher than the invested experience, but with only ambiguous micro-skills, battling enemies matching the right difficulty level might prove difficult.

Though he has prepared for the risk, if there's a way to reduce the risk at low cost, it would be better.

He decides to postpone the more expensive "Mental Magic" and starts by acquiring "Training", "Summoning", and "Undead". He spends a total of 60 points to acquire these three skills. After obtaining them, he checks back on each skill tree, but none provide clear clues.

There are no signs of improvement in the available skills. Well, this was anticipated. Now is not the time to panic. If Rare had met the requirements to acquire new skills at this point, it should have been discovered earlier.

So, the next step is "Mental Magic".

To achieve "Mastery", he needs to spend 10 points on "Confusion", 40 points each on "Fear" and "Attraction", and finally 60 points on "Mastery", totaling 150 points.

Now he realizes that if he fails, he'll need to gather more experience with only ambiguous micro-skills. However, by taking "Mental Magic" this far, he can be said to have built a strong "Mental Magic" build.

Since the ability in "Mental Magic" depends on the MND attribute, by allocating all experience points to MND, he'll be able to fight fairly well. Also, the higher his MND, the higher his MP capacity when using skills, which is advantageous. So, there's no more reason to hesitate.

Rare spends 150 points to achieve "Mastery" in "Mental Magic".

If the speculation is correct, there should be an increase in the available skills now.

Now, let's check "Training" first...

No new skills are found in the "Training" skill tree.

No new skills are found in the "Summoning" skill tree.

And in the "Undead" skill tree...

I obtained 'Soul Slavery'!

This is it! This is what I've been looking for! Turns out I wasn't off course!

With enthusiasm, Rare pays the experience without hesitation.

The new effect obtained from 'Soul Slavery' is "Taking the soul of a corpse within one hour of its death. Additionally, when 'Necromancy' is activated on the targeted corpse, if the soul still exists, resistance to 'Necromancy' will be nullified. If having a soul stock, that stock can be used to select 'Control' targets from the 'Soulless Unit', 'Homunculus', or 'Golem' categories in 'Mental Magic: Control'."

Powerful! ... or is it? This...

When looked at individually, its effect is just "taking the soul of a corpse", and its usage is unclear. It even looks like ordinary decorative text.

However, by having this skill, at least at that moment, Rare surely has 'Necromancy' and 'Control', and this is quite useful for dealing with the "low success rate" or "can only act on living creatures" aspect of both skills.

I'm not quite sure about that soul stock, but it's likely the souls of corpses taken with 'Soul Slavery'.

However, the experience cost required to obtain it is 60 points, which is quite heavy for the second skill in that tree. Even so, if I want to focus on this skill to pay for experience, from 'Control' to 'Necromancy' requires a total of 170 points, which cannot be met with just initial experience.

If we consider that at the time of the closed trial, there were no built-in system features, then at this time there should be few players who have reached this skill level. This is the type of development that players wouldn't try if they didn't know about the existence of "soul binding". Perhaps players who know about the existence of "soul binding" are very rare.

Furthermore, there is one more thing, which is that "soul binding" can only take the soul from a corpse that has been dead for 1 hour. If we consider this fact along with the "summon" specifications, then it seems that the soul of a person who dies in this world remains in the corpse for 1 hour.

Unexpectedly, because no one tried to verify, the condition of "corpse with a still existing soul" which was previously considered a nuance or damage to the corpse, finally came to light.

Anyway, now we can obtain passive skills that strengthen "control" and "summon".

Although we have used about 2/3 of the total experience we have gathered, at least now we can fight well.

If forced, the biggest concern is that very strong enemies like field bosses or dungeon bosses have very high resistance to "mental magic", and it may be very difficult to fight against them.

―― Well, it's not like we can't win without a very sharp knife, but it's also not like we don't have a way to deal with it.

Rhea feels a little relieved, and at this point, she feels satisfied enough even though no further progress can be made. She decides to check back on "training".

"Training" still remains the only skill tree, not a skill tree, and only a "training" skill tree at that.

While considering whether she should change course, Rhea opens the "summon" skill tree.

She finds that she can now obtain the "contract" skill. Reflexively, she pays experience to obtain it.

Its effect is "binding the soul of a successfully summoned subject with a contract. On the next summoning, the contracted character can be selected as the summoning subject, and in that case, the subject will not resist the summoning. With "summon: soul binding", the soul of a corpse whose soul has been taken can be added to the contract list."

Like "soul binding", this is a pure enhancement for the basic "summon" skill. Additionally, it also provides an additional effect on "soul binding" which is a requirement to obtain it. This is a very strong skill. To gather everything up to this stage, it takes at least 310 experience points.

At this point, Rhea can be said to be able to fight with three outstanding skills: "mental magic", "summon", and "control". Although she has paid a large amount of experience, it was worth it.

The evidence that the previous analysis was largely correct has already been proven. Rhea no longer doubts that there may be new skills in "training".

And as Rhea's conviction, the new skill she can obtain from the "training" skill tree is, in fact, "control".

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