He mused about the implications of the new perk and skills for a while, before he turned his attention somewhere else. His Attribute Points and Skill points still waited to be distributed.

The first 8 of the 133 APs went into Strength to bring it from 292 to 300. He was curious whether he would gain another skill if he did so and he was not disappointed.

!>

Maybe he was a little disappointed. The title was okay, but when he checked his skill window for the description of , it became a little embarrassing.

Usage Requirement: At least bare-chested

Based on the strength difference with your target, you have a chance to startle onlookers when using .>

The skill was literally taking off your clothes and flexing your muscles like a bodybuilder. He did NOT try it out and quickly tried to forget about it. Did this mean he would get a title and a weird skill like this for all his attributes that reached 300?

To test his theory, he put another 20 points in Dexterity and promptly had another notification.

!>

For a moment Seth expected the worst, but he heaved a sigh of relief when he remembered that was a basic skill for the spear and had nothing to do with anything remotely close to was was.

was a passive skill that dealt an additional 15% damage when thrusting with a weapon. It was no awe-inspiring skill, but nice to have. Definitely better than . The next attribute closest to 300 was endurance, so he added 26 point to endurance. He grimaced when he gained another questionable skill.

!>

Luckily, it was more normal than the name suggested. Hot Gates was a passive skill that improved defense by 15% when in a stable defensive position. Now Seth was left with 79 attribute points. The options were getting Willpower or Agility to 300, or splitting them among them and intelligence.

Well, one thing was clear for Seth, he didn't need any more agility at the moment. He could barely handle the speed he had with his armor. On the other hand, he was a little sad about how endurance had managed to leave willpower in the dust after using the body-refining pills.

He needed willpower for a lot of things, especially his abilities like and his skills pertaining the working with skills. The decision was rather easy. He uses 67 of his points on Willpower and put the rest on intelligence, bringing them to 300 and 226.

!>

Finally, a skill and title that both seemed normal. was another passive skill. It improved the resistance to mental attacks and status effects by a flat 15%. it was a little redundant since Laraweg, his helmet, gave him 100% immunity to such effects thanks to the Blessing of Lethe.

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Still, he wasn't complaining. After all, the skill would be working, even if he didn't wear his helmet. It was just a shame that none of these skills could be improved. All of them came with the (max)-tag from the start. He couldn't even try to use skill points on them.

After distributing the APs, he turned to the skill points. He had twelve shiny points that could improve his skills. Although he had just gotten the trait that brought a lot of goodies if he improved his crafting skills, Seth had already kind of decided what he was going to improve.

Even though Ceres was unable to tell him anything more, after seeing the Golem Forge, Seth decided that he had to max out the . Getting the smithy to level 8 would cost 9 SPs. There was a chance that it would not gain a new perk with the next level, but the blacksmith didn't mind. He was determined to use all the skill points he would get on the until it was maxed out.

He selected the skill and used 9 points to upgrade it. When he was what the new level brought with it, he fell silent. After a moment he summoned a desk. It was a square desk made of black obsidian, with outlandish carvings on its top.

Set in the middle stood a big device with the edge almost on eye level with Seth. It looked almost like an hourglass, with a big funnel made of crystal glass above and a conical flask of the same material below.

This was crazy, an absolutely insane invention. It was preposterous, appalling, incredible, and downright ingenious. This was: The Soul Refinery. Literally a distillery for souls that could purify, or reduce souls like they were water or spirits.

Its description said that it could directly refine huge numbers of low-quality souls not only into bigger souls but also souls with a higher rating because it got rid of the fragments during the process. The outcome would be a clean slate of greater size and higher rank. If one wanted to use it as a pure power source, it was perfect.

The other option was to tell it to reduce souls with similar abilities, into a soul with a stronger ability created from the culmination of all souls used. This was similar to what Seth had done with the archer and duelist souls, but much easier and probably more effective than the blacksmith doing it by hand.

Together with the golem forge, these two crafting stations showed that Forgeright had completely turned into a crazy scientist as time progressed. And that he was big in the golem business. What else was the dwarf supposed to do with the souls, right?

Well, it wasn't really important what Forgebrand used it for, now Seth had it. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to use it for, but he was sure he could find some good use for it.

Having spent nine skill points on he had three left to save up for the next stage of the skill. They had not been here for long, but he had already gained a lot. Looking at his other class skill, he was sure and would level up soon.

Especially , he could feel that it had made a good jump with the souls he had passively collected from the battlefield. Despite not going out of his way to collect all of them, he had collected over 700 common medium souls and a good bunch of big common and uncommon souls, too.

The only soul and body he deliberately went to collect were those of the Mantidae general Monique managed to kill.

< Scythe Assassin's Soul (Big, Rare)

Soul of a high-level insect monster that excelled in ambush and melee combat. High attainment in camouflage, assassination skills, and dual-wielding scythes. Trait: Twin Blade>

It was regrettable that Seth did not have the chance to harvest it directly. The blacksmith had gotten better at gauging the size of souls without relying on just the system description. As "big" could mean anything between 1000-10.000 mana it was a great disparity of the size a big soul could have.

The Scythe Assassin's Soul was big, but just on the cusp of being massive. Had he directly harvested it, it would have probably been double or more its current size. But he quickly realized that this was not a loss. Not anymore.

Now he had the Soul Refinery. This was the simplest-to-understand function. If he used it to refine and purify a bunch of smaller souls, he could get a big, completely clean soul. Without impurities in the souls, there would be much fewer negative effects to fusing souls to improve their size.

He could go even further, but it was currently not the time to explore the way to use the soul refinery. He had been standing around outside for too long and quickly went to their tent, to accompany Mina for the night. It was a long day, it was just the beginning.