The next few days passed, and the three of us quickly fell into a new routine. For a while, I thought that this routine would last all the way until we had to return to the mainland. However, five days after Diane revealed the information about the upcoming patch, there were two problems that interfered with our regular schedule.
The first problem was the fact that our storm cloud had drifted north, carrying it towards the Evergreen. If we didn’t leave soon, we’d be in a prime position to be captured. Naturally, this alone warranted us leaving more than enough.
The second thing… okay, so it wasn’t so much a problem, but it certainly disrupted my normal training schedule. As I was setting up the car, getting ready to drive us away from what had become our home for nearly the last two weeks, a prompt appeared in front of me.
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Duke of All Trades-X has reached level 100! Would you like to evolve this skill? |
I stood there, the door of the car open, staring at the window in shock. I knew that the skill had been close… but it had been close for the last month. The last ten levels had taken ages to upgrade, even considering the fact that I had it on constantly, even while I was asleep. The last time that I turned my basic stat enhancements off was when I was training with Kelly.
“Is everything alright, Drake?” Diane asked, leaning to the side to peer at me through the open door.
“Y-yeah… My stat skill just hit level one hundred.” I said, and Diane’s eyes widened.
“You mean you can upgrade it to the grandmaster level now?” She asked, and I nodded my head. “Well? Go on! I want to see what a proper grandmaster skill is like after being trained from scratch.”
Bella was nodding her head, equally enthusiastic. “Yeah. I’ve only ever heard legends about skills like that. I’ve never had the chance to see one for myself.”
My hand felt especially heavy as I brought it to the window, confirming the evolution. Immediately, a new window appeared, describing the new skill.
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King of All Trades (Martial – 10☆): Evolved from Duke of All Trades-X. Massively boosts all statistics while active, increases skill experience gain, and creates an aura to empower allies. Mana Burden: 0/sec. Level: 1 |
As soon as I chose to evolve the skill, my body released a golden, almost regal aura. I looked down at my hands, shocked by how everything felt. More importantly… “It says that it increases experience gain.” I told the two of them, who looked at me in surprise.
“Isn’t that sort of broken for you?” Bella asked, but Diane shook her head after a minute.
“Not really. I mean, it’s good, and he’ll definitely benefit from it. But it’s not as busted as it would be for another player. I had been curious about your training methods before, so I reached out to Karlson. Just a simple analysis would be enough to know that you should have had at least three grandmaster ranked skills by now, with how you train.” Diane explained, and Bella’s eyes widened further.
“Karlson poured through the books he had access to, and found a training manual from someone with a more limited version of your trait. Apparently, there is a softcap to the amount of experience you can get with any particular skill per day. If you go over that point, experience gain is heavily reduced, though Karlson couldn’t tell me by just how much.”
“For most people, this isn’t an issue, because with regular cooldowns, people never get the chance to reach that softcap even with a day of hard training. However, Drake just spams skills every second when he gets into ‘training mode’. He probably hits the softcap for most of his skills within the first hour of training.”
“Does that mean that I shouldn’t train after I hit the limit?” I asked, but Diane shook her head.
“Like I said, it’s a soft cap. That means that you still get experience after you hit it, it’s just reduced. It wouldn’t be worth it for a normal person to train after that point, but you can make up for it with sheer stubbornness.” Bella couldn’t help but chuckle when she heard Dian’s explanation.
“Anyways, can you do something about this visual effect? That’s going to stand out wherever we go, and not in a good way.” Diane finished, and I nodded my head. I had managed to cover up the visual effects of Nature’s Warden with False Identity-X, so I tried to apply it to King of All Trades.
Sure enough, the aura seemed to disappear, though the skill was still fully active. Diane glanced out at the corner of her vision. “I’ve still got an enhancement buff… I’ll have to see how big the buff is next time we hit a dungeon.”
We had already tackled the pirate dungeon for the day, clearing out the new mobs that had spawned in. In addition, we had started raiding another dungeon, this one located on another cloud that ours had drifted near. This new dungeon carried level one hundred and forty Bloody Bombers, a type of vulture that could send out blood attacks, or perform a suicide dive bomb for high damage. Bella had actually died the first time we tried that dungeon, but our respawn anchor was safe for her to return.
Regardless, our usual dungeons had already been raided for the day, so we would have to find another way to test this new buff. While thinking about that, I finally got into the car and drove away from the cloud. Down below, I could already see the mainland starting to come into view. Both this dungeon and the bloody vulture one were likely to hit the coast within a few hours.
“Where do we go now?” I asked, glancing over at Diane, who had effectively become our navigator.
She pursed her lips in thought. “I’d like to get somewhere soon. I’ve only got a couple more hours left before I need to log out for the day. It’d be best if we can find a cloud that’s not moving towards Evergreen, but I’d settle for a regular island if we can’t find anything better.”
I chuckled, nodding my head. “I’ll head to the west, just in case. Even if we do find something heading north, it might just be far enough for us to miss the mainland.”
With that, I turned to leave our explored territory, quite literally entering uncharted waters. Diane and Bella both stared down at the water, looking for any signs of habitable land while I watched the clouds. “Volcanic island, hard pass. I don’t want to wake up covered in lava from a surprise eruption.” Diane muttered, looking at an island down below where lava flowed from an active volcano.
About twenty minutes later, Bella spoke up. “Oh! There, there’s three islands down in the water. They should be big enough for us!” She said, pointing at a group of distant islands. Each one was no more than a kilometer wide, but they were covered with greenery. In addition, birds circled overhead.
“Let’s go check the level range.” Diane nodded, since we hadn’t found anything better in the meantime. “And see whether this is a normal island or a dungeon.”
I chuckled, driving the card down towards the islands, and scanning them once we were close enough. “Well, the birds are all consistent. They’re just level sixty, and their only skill is Water Shot.”
Driving in closer, I spotted a vortex within the center of the three islands, almost fully obscured by the dense shrubbery. “Looks like this is definitely a dungeon… still, it’s a good spot to make camp.”
Diane nodded her head, jumping out of the car once I had parked it. “Bella, can you clear out the birds? I’m going to scout around and see if there’s anything else here.” She said, before disappearing into the thicket.
Bella let out a small sigh, retrieving her bow and beginning to pick off the birds. Although they quickly noticed where the shots were coming from, they weren’t able to hit us with their own attacks once I conjured a protective barrier.
Bella’s eyes widened as she watched her arrows flying. “This is definitely a noticeable improvement over my normal accuracy…” She said aloud, just as Diane returned.
“Yeah. The range seems to be ten meters, and it only affects those you consider your allies.” She said, holding a now-dead bird in one hand by the neck. “This thing didn’t get any kind of bonus once I brought it in range.”
“That’s… good to know?” I muttered, my eye twitching. “Anyways, let’s go ahead and get set up.” I shook my head, looking for a good location to build the house.
Diane nodded her agreement. “These islands are drifting just like the cloud was, but they seem to be drifting to the south for now. I’ll keep an eye on their position to make sure we don’t get lost.”
I was about to ask how an island could drift, before stopping myself and remembering that we were recently living on an island perched atop a stormcloud. Floating islands did not seem that unreasonable anymore.
Instead, I shook my head, starting the construction of our new house. Since there wasn’t much for me to do while I watched it work, I sent a message to Ennolf, noticing that he and his wife were online. Do you have a moment to chat?
Yeah, what’s up man? He responded after just a moment.
Did you see the notes on the upcoming update? I asked, soon receiving an affirmative response. I talked about it with my party, and we decided that I should set up a kingdom of my own. I was wondering if you would like to join it?
I hadn’t planned to ask Ennolf this from the beginning. He had already founded a city of his own called Fallowton, where they were gathering and caring for less appreciated Fallen, those who didn’t have enough levels to really make anything of themselves, or who had abusive players in the past.
It just seemed unfair to ask them to uproot their lives in Athua to move to a kingdom that hadn’t even been established yet. You’re starting a kingdom? Count us in! Ennolf responded, completely subverting my expectations.
That was… a very fast reply. Are you sure you don’t need to talk about it with your wife? I asked, but he replied swiftly once again.
Nuoda and I had already talked it over. If you decided that you wanted to make your own kingdom, we were planning to join you to begin with. We just didn’t think you’d want to, since it would put you in the spotlight. Especially after the situation with Evergreen. They might outright declare war on you if they learn you established a nation of your own.
My eyes widened at that, seriously considering the possibility. If they did declare war, all it would take was sending someone like Jana, and they’d be able to crush any cities I could establish. However… thinking about it, I wasn’t sure it fit their typical methods.
After all, they wouldn’t just be declaring war on me, they’d be declaring war on every player in my nation. This would inevitably put a stain on their own reputation among players, something that they’ve been doing everything in their power to avoid. No, instead of declaring war, it was far more likely that they would try to send repeat assassins that weren’t directly linked to them. And… if they did that, hopefully Wisteria would give me a little warning.
