Level 1 Fallen

Unsurprisingly, there was nobody else in the same trial as me this time, since who in their right mind would come here to subject themselves to poisons? While this meant that I had my privacy, it also meant that there was nothing for me to do. I couldn't risk practicing any of my other skills, because I didn't know what this current poison would react to. One wrong move, and this poison trial might just turn into a trial for fire resistance.

Thus, I did the only thing I could think of, sitting down and planning out the uses for our remaining enchantment skill books. Like that, the time passed, and I pushed the effects of the poison fog to the back of my mind, only healing myself once in a while when I felt it starting to affect my thoughts.

I lost track of time, mentally simulating various skill combinations with either myself or Diane to try to find more interesting techniques. Like, maybe I could channel my Martial Intent-X together with another elemental ability, and create a new elemental martial ability? If I did that with Fireball or Lightning Bolt, would I be able to get fire and lightning equivalents to my Shadow Arsenal?

Eventually, I noticed a notification from Diane, letting me know that she was ready to leave. Blinking, I looked around, seeing that there were multiple messages waiting for me. I had gained five levels in my Poison Resistance, bringing it up to fourteen, and made it through the first six trials for Poison Resistance. I had expected to need to move from one room to the other during the process, but it seemed like they simply increased the potency of the poison.

Maybe this was because someone poisoned might not naturally be able to move to the next room on their own, so they were being considerate? Either way, I had gotten to the point where I was casting my healing skill at least once a minute, so the current poison was definitely good enough to be viable in combat.

Shaking my head, I simply stopped casting Internal Recovery-X, allowing the poison to kill me. Unlike the butchery trials, I wasn't given the choice of rewards for each level cleared. Instead, all I received was a poison pill for each, one which I assumed matched the level of poison in each cleared trial.

When I got out of the dungeon, Diane was already waiting for me, nodding in my direction and gesturing for me to follow behind her. "Did you finish everything you need?" She asked.

"Yeah, I was just training a resistance skill." I answered honestly, trading her the poison pills, as well as the venom sacs and the blood that I had been holding onto. "What about you, did you get your skill evolutions?"

"Yeah, I'm good to go now. I'll tell you about the evolutions once we're out of the city." I arched my brow, not sure why she needed to wait for something like that. Did she consider the skills she obtained to be some major secret? Or, was this just a normal thing for Players, not wanting to share potentially valuable knowledge freely.

Still, I nodded my acceptance, following her outside the city. As we approached the gate, the rabbitfolk guard from yesterday walked up with a smile. "Good evening, sir!" She said brightly. "Are you heading out to do another round of harvesting? If so, I can collect the brothers to accompany you."

I chuckled slightly, shaking my head. "Afraid not. My friend and I are preparing to leave Broken Sands, so this is goodbye."

The guard's rabbit ears drooped slightly when she heard that, but she quickly nodded. "Alright, I suppose there's no helping it. Still, if you're ever in the area again, feel free to stop by."

I nodded my thanks, exiting through the gate with Diane. There were still a couple hours of daylight left at this point. I wasn't sure if we could make it all the way out of Ilsan, but we could certainly make it to the next city. "Who was that?" Diane asked in an amused tone.

"She's the guard I told you about. The one that arranged some porters for me." I answered, pulling the bike out of my inventory once we were out of the city. "So, where are we going next?"

Diane swiftly hopped onto the back seat, waiting for me to mount up and activate my Ghost-X skill before speaking. "Straight west. In a hundred and fifty kilometers, we'll hit Falconlot. It's an oasis city within Ilsan. They have some dungeons there that I want to visit to get skills for Wyr. Once we're done there, I'd like to visit Daggerloft to the southeast of there, and then it will be straight south to the coast."

I nodded my head at that, immediately starting up the bike and driving ahead. Since the wheels kicked up the sand so much, I used my skill to create a platform to ride on just over the ground. At the same time, because of my stealth skill, the roar of the engine seemed almost silent. "So, what are your skill upgrades? Is there a reason you didn't want to talk about it in town?"

Diane hesitated for a moment, before nodding her head. "Yeah, they didn't go the path I expected. First, they didn't fuse like I had hoped, so I evolved them individually. For my Alchemy skill, I received the Essence Crafter skill. This lets me take the essences that I refine with normal alchemy, and combine them into new essences. Naturally, I can still use these essences for potions, but I can also temporarily imbue certain essences into items, like a form of pseudo-enchanting."

"However, that's not all. Scroll Crafting evolved into Rune Writing. Like with Essence Crafter, I can trace runes onto an item to give it a temporary enchantment, or I can make magic formations on the ground. However, I need to first learn the proper runes, and the system only records a rune I've already learned. To learn new ones, I have to learn skills associated with the rune, or break down equipment that has those skills enchanted onto it."

"Okay, those both sound really cool." I spoke up, still confused. "So, why did you not want to say anything about it in town?"

"The church." She answered, and I looked back at her for an explanation. "Apparently, the church has been cracking down on these two skill trees. They're both able to handle healing at a low material cost, either through runes or potions. However, the church has always had a monopoly on healing magic. That's why you had to go through so much trouble to learn your healing skill, right?"

I nodded my head, remembering the pain I endured to finally get a healing skill. "So, what are they doing?"

"According to some players on the forums, if anyone unaligned with the church shows a mastery in either of these skills, the church will begin to make things difficult for them. Refusing to issue them quests or teach them skills, or even looking for excuses to arrest them over minor charges. I can't imagine that this behavior will last very long before the players revolt, but for now it's better if I keep quiet about these skills, and only practice them when it's just the two of us."

My eyes widened, listening to the explanation from Diane. "Wow… but wait, how are the players going to revolt against the church? Don't you still need to use their services for healing skills?"

Diane simply chuckled knowingly. "Players are creative, Drake. If we feel like we're being oppressed, we will find a way to overturn the situation. There are already talks on the forum of organizing mass raids on church-controlled dungeons. If the church's monopoly on healing magic and light magic is broken, they won't have anything to use to control players. There's even talk of a ten-star trait holder participating."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

My hand gripped the handlebar of the bike tight, looking ahead. "What ten star trait is this one?"

"He says it's called Printing Press. He can copy any skill from one skill book onto another skill book of the same tier. As for his negative trait, he hasn't revealed it. However, he has come forward and said that he would be more than happy to help the players copy as many skill books as they want for no charge."

I couldn't help but chuckle wryly when I heard that explanation, causing Diane to look at me in confusion. "What? It seems like a good deal, doesn't it?"

"I'm sure it is. It's probably a deal that benefits both sides." I sighed, feeling like I was catching onto something. "All of the really high-tier traits like mine come in sets. I wasn't sure of it originally, but I've seen a few other examples since then. The guildmaster of the league, the dragon player Drake, that skeletal mage, and even a fire mage I met a while back. The higher the tier of the trait, the more closely related its counterpart."

"Take the skeletal mage for instance. He had the ability to amass an endless number of minions to fight on his behalf, but he only had one life. Clearly, his traits were designed specifically for him to be an army commander, gaining experience leading his forces into battle."

"If I had to guess, this Printing Press guy has an extremely harsh penalty, and hasn't revealed his full positive trait. If he were creating new skill books, that would be worthy of a ten star rating, but just overwriting others? That would be eight or nine stars at best. Looking at how eager he is to offer his services to other players, he probably gets a reward like skill experience every time he uses his trait. And whatever reward he gets is something absolutely vital to him, because his negative trait would make it impossible to get under normal circumstances."

Diane arched a brow, looking curiously at me. "What sort of negative trait would have a penalty like that?"

I glanced back, smiling bitterly. "My friend, Ella, is a fire mage with a nine star Inept Mage trait. Because of it, she is incapable of learning any magic skills through normal methods. In exchange, her positive trait lets her learn any skill with the fire attribute just by seeing it once, and cast it at half cost. He probably has something similar that prevents him from learning or training skills normally."

Diane looked surprised by this, before giving a knowing chuckle. "So, what would your trait archetype be?" She asked, and I let out a groan.

"Probably something like Martial King. My traits were clearly meant for me to exclusively learn Martial skills, and train them to be stronger than anyone else. Of course, I wasn't going to just do that, because I've always wanted to learn magic, just like your Chosen. To be completely cut off from Magic skills like that isn't something I'd accept sitting down."

"Even if it meant nearly shattering your arms every time you enchant them." She muttered, and I could detect a hint of bitterness in her voice.

"Don't worry. I'm starting to get used to the pain. I didn't even cry out the last time I enchanted a couple magic skills." I bragged, but she gripped the back of my shirt firmly. "By the way, on that subject, I had an idea for what we could do for one of those books, now that we're not being watched."

With that, I explained my idea to combine a downcasted Ki Projection with Fireball to make a martial fire skill. Diane thought about it for a moment, before nodding her head. "Alright. Shall we pause to do that now, then?" She asked, to which I agreed, looking around and finding a large rock to land the bike on.

"Out of curiosity, do you have any fire essences, or fire runes?" I asked hesitantly, dismounting the bike and storing it in my inventory. "If I want to maximize the chance of a successful enchantment and not waste the skill book, I'm going to need to add some ritual to this."

Diane arched her brow, shaking her head. "No, but maybe Vitality essences could work? You gave me all of that blood before, so I can make plenty of those."

Seeing me nod in approval, Diane pulled out a large table from her inventory. At first, I thought it was similar to her old alchemy kit, but the beakers, burners, and flasks were replaced by a large, rotating disk with numerous engravings. "One hundred milliliters of blood." She muttered, and a red orb of liquid appeared suspended above the rotating disk.

Diane began to manipulate the disk, eyes focused as she adjusted its alignment. "Filter out the poison, earth, and wind. Condense." Three of the symbols on the disk lit up, and the blood bubbled, starting to evaporate. "What other essence is in this?" She muttered, staring deeply. "Right, the Beast essence. Filter. Condense." Another symbol lit up, and the blood bubbled further, shifting and shrinking down to the size of a small, red pill.

"How many do you need?" Diane asked, passing me the Vitality Essence. Looking at it, I could see that this one essence was only worth a single silver coin, but I knew that this was only the beginning of what she could do with it.

"I'd like ten, if possible." I said, and Diane nodded her head, repeating the process nine more times.

Once she was done, I sat down on the rock, opening the blank Enchantment Skill Book and placing all ten essences on its pages. Then, I extended my hands, and began to focus. "If it looks like I'm about to burn the book, kick it away from me." I told Diane, who readily nodded her head.

Okay, now for the cringeworthy chant. "Burn, projection of my blood." I spoke while channeling both Fireball and a downcasted Ki Projection. "Become the flames of my heart. Take root, take shape, become the blade that will cleave mountains. Become the armor that protects its master."

The essences began to melt, and I watched strange symbols appearing on the skill book, the text glowing like firelight. Meanwhile, I hissed in pain, cuts opening up on my arm. As soon as it left my body, the blood ignited, wrapping my arm in flames. I could only bite my lip fiercely, trying not to break my focus.

Diane, meanwhile, watched closely, ready to act at a moment's notice. Thankfully, the backlash didn't continue any further, and the fire on my arm quickly extinguished. Naturally, I healed immediately afterwards. "Did it work?" I grunted, feeling my arm to make sure it was okay.

Diane leaned down, picking up the book and closing it, before showing me the cover. 'Fire Projection'. I let out a sigh, glad to see that the name at least looked right. "I won't learn it yet. First, let's downgrade it."

Diane nodded her head, watching as I pulled out one of our two Skill Demotion Books. "I used two second-tier skills to make this, so it should still be a second-tier itself. One demotion should put it at the basic level."

Using the Skill Demotion Book turned it into a skill book for Fire Shaping. Once I finished that, I nodded my head, taking the book and learning it.

I let out a sigh of relief, glad to see that nothing had gone wrong. Perhaps the Vitality essences had truly helped it lean towards the Martial side of things, rather than becoming a Magic skill.

"So? Did it work?" Diane asked, and I nodded my head, issuing a basic quest to her. She had to kill any creature using fire damage, and she would be able to learn the skill herself. "Do I really need it?" She asked, sighing.

"You want the Fire rune, right?" I asked with a knowing smile. "Or do you plan to be a ninja that can't set explosive traps in the middle of combat?"

Diane hesitated, before letting out a long groan, accepting the quest. "I hate that you understand my roleplay so well. You know that, right?" She asked, reaching into her inventory to pull out a torch. To help her along, I used my new skill, creating a fire in my palm and lighting the torch.

Seeing my action, Diane winced. "That doesn't hurt, right?" She asked, and I looked at my hand curiously.

"Surprisingly… no? I think it's because the fire is made from my own vitality. If you did this, it would probably burn me, because it wasn't my vitality. Or maybe that's just how the skill works so that you don't burn yourself every time you cast it."