Chapter 543 (1/2)
Randidly chuckled wryly at the rewards for this Path. The attributes were a nice boost, but what was the focus of his attention were the allocatable Stats. He wondered whether 6 was high, relatively speaking. In terms of rewards for Paths, it was undoubtedly high. But Randidly wondered if he gave Neveah an even bigger amount of power through his enormous Stats.
This did remind Randidly that he needed to contact Neveah and see what she was up to. Obviously, she wasn’t in any danger, but her just hanging around that political man made him somewhat nervous.
As for the bonus ability… perhaps there were situations where that would be useful, but the cost was somewhat hard to bear in the short term. Obviously, there was a lot of strategic value of one of them being able to go into battle, while the other could summon them out if things grew too sticky. It was worth considering, down the line.
Satisfied with the gains, Randidly looked at his available Paths. Honestly, he was starting to grow somewhat weary of the proliferation of options.
Heretic XXV 0/???, Nexus Traveler Cohort 5 0/50, Experimenter I 0/50, Fighting Proficiency III 0/???, System Transgressor 0/1, Steps of the Godling II Path 0/200, The Road to Mastery 0/500, Growth of Yggdrasil II 0/500, Crown of Yggdrasil 0/500, Friend to Humanity 0/100, War Leader 0/200, Path of the Patron 0/500, Metallurgist 0/300, Advanced Mana Engraving 0/400, Aether Convergence I ???, Perfect Soul Bond 0/1000
After the Judgement once more descended at 20, Heretic continued to climb steadily upwards. Strangely, that Judgement hadn’t been that difficult to handle; the yeti that had attacked him the previous times wasn’t summoned on that occasion. Instead, just hundreds of the empowered minion yetis came. They were extremely annoying but weren’t a serious threat without their larger counterpoint.
It was honestly a pleasant surprise. But at the same time, it gave Randidly a chill. It felt… too weak to be purposeful. Another option then, was that the yeti was still alive on Shal’s world. It seemed impossible, but…
Shaking his head, Randidly considered his other options. He could worry about the Judgement later. Nexus Traveler 5, Experimenter I, System Transgressor, and Friend to Humanity were all immediately discarded. None of them seemed to yield useful Skills, which was sorta what Randidly was looking for now. Although he had a limited number of slots finding quality choices for those slots were important.
And Randidly had the feeling that he was beginning to be deep enough in the Path tree to find them.
Because he was unsure of how it would affect him, he discarded Steps of the Godling. Lucretia had taken over much more directly in handling the issues of his Soul Skill, which freed him up from that responsibility. She didn’t rule it directly, but as far as Randidly could tell, she had an organization on the ground inside of it. When there was trouble, she dealt with it decisively. Internal weakness could not be permitted again.
War Leader was intriguing, but he was not one who would ever be leading an army. That was not the Ghosthound’s MO. Although Path of the Patron was extremely tempting, it was discarded for similar reasons. Becoming a Patron, which is what Randidly believed that Path would result in, was an official process. Randidly would not take the System lightly.
A new arrival, Perfect Soul Bond, was discarded just because its cost was a monstrous 1000 PP. Randidly shivered. Depending on how quickly he grew, that might take him as long as a year. It was hard to imagine keeping a Path for that long.
Another new Path open to him, Aether Convergence seemed tempting. But Randidly was wary of what heading down that Path might mean. After all, what changes had he made that would lead the System toward rewarding him with an Aether Convergence Path? What if the effect was to combine his Aether’s with the System…?
No, better to avoid it, Randidly decided. Which left a much-reduced list to choose from.
Fighting Proficiency III 0/???, The Road to Mastery 0/500, Growth of Yggdrasil II 0/500, Crown of Yggdrasil 0/500, Advanced Mana Engraving 0/400
Fighting Proficiency was another shot in the dark, but it was growing slowly, and the prior two Paths cost 80 and 100 PP, respectively. Therefore, the next leg of that Path couldn’t be very long. On the other hand, the Skill he had obtained previously from that string of Paths was Counter. Although Counter was a useful move, and one that Randidly had been able to grind recently for experience, its power was only so-so. Honestly, Randidly had suspected that Shal’s way of teaching was the real problem; Randidly was simply not very skilled at counters.
Growth of Yggdrasil was another leg of something he had completed, in the 6 months of training before the borderlands opened. He had earned a pretty sizable amount of Vitality from putting points into it and was rewarded with a boost in the Rarity of his Yggdrasil Skills at the end, which was extremely tempting. He put that as a maybe.
Road to Mastery was the next step in the Newbie, Trainee, Apprentice, Journeyman, Adept line of Paths, or so Randidly believed. It was something that would probably yield Skills. So that was another maybe.
Advanced Mana Engraving might help a lot now, as Randidly struggled to figure out how to make these runes that he wanted. But that was a red herring, and Randidly knew it. He wouldn’t receive the knowledge from a Path. He might obtain a useful Skill, but the actual knowledge of its use would only come from himself.
For this, Randidly had a new plan. He wanted to go back and make a sizable chunk of metal, and then use that to buy all the different blueprints that he could afford. He would learn the runes involved in them, and then use the Mana Engraving Encyclopedias he had been given all that time ago on Shal’s world. With both these sources of study, Randidly refused to believe he wouldn’t be able to make progress on the creation of his own style of runes.
There was a ghost of a smile on his face. The Spear Phantom Style of runes.
But Randidly knew what he was taking. For a long time, he had wondered why he had not created a Skill Set with the Yggdrasil Skills. One explanation was that there was a special process to do so, but Randidly had done it with the Ashen Spear without doing anything at all special. Then what was missing was not a random input, but a Skill to hold it all together, and make it a Skill Set.
The Crown of Yggdrasil had a certain solemnity to it that drew Randidly’s eyes. It made his skin tingle. Instinctively, he knew his answer was there.
Of course, when Randidly put his PP into it, nothing happened for a long time. It was only after he dumped fully 50 PP into it that it gave him 10 unallocated Stats. Randidly shook his head unhappily but tried not to pay too close attention to it. It would give him the reward he sought, he had no doubt. He wasn’t sure of the details, but from the treatment of Skill Sets on Shal’s world, it was clear they held a special allure.
The fact that he had a high-Level Skill was interesting, but not enough; a Skill Set at his Level made him exemplary. Randidly was looking forward to seeing how obtaining a Skill Set would change his Yggdrasil Skills.
Before Randidly rushed back over to the metalworking factory to put his plan into action, he took a glance at his Stats and rolled his eyes. Honestly, at this point, it was getting hard to follow all of the changes to himself. But in his heart, he knew, he was becoming strong.
Randidly Ghosthound
Class: Planting of the Forest of Enmity (+x5)