If I were to run at my full speed, as I did when heading to Arcanhide, I would likely be able to make it to the next village in less than four hours, giving enough time to rest along the way. However, I had no intention of doing that. If I did, I would be passing up too many opportunities to train my skills along the way.

Looking at the date, Ennolf and Nuoda should have already left Decashear, so there was no sense in trying to catch up to their pace. I didn’t know where Diane was planning to go. Now that I had left Ella back in Arcanhide, I was essentially left to my own devices.

The first thing that I worked on was enchanting both my boots and pants. Each of those could be enchanted simply by walking or running down the road, as they were going to be given the same set of three enchantments, saving the last for later. Between Stealth, Fast Runner, and Adrenaline Rush, that was enough to lessen the burden of carrying so much armor on myself.

However, I noticed something when I placed Adrenaline Rush on the items. Unlike the normal stat enchantments, Adrenaline Rush was not a permanent enhancement. Rather, it was a toggle that I needed to activate. Not particularly hard for me to do, but it was something that I would need to keep in mind in the future.

Next was my chest armor, on which I enchanted Stongman, Resilience, and Adrenaline Surge. There weren’t really any surprises when it came to this, though I was happy to feel the weight of the armor lessen considerably. All that was left now was my helmet, sword, and shield. For my helmet, I wanted to wait until my perception-related abilities had evolved. Meanwhile, for my sword… since this was the Black Steel armor set, I wanted to put the shadow abilities on the sword, rather than my flame slash.

Before I could do that, though, I had to practice with my newly purchased skills… which meant enchanting the magic ones on my temporary gloves. Thankfully, by the time I was done enchanting my boots, leggings, and breastplate, I had already made a considerable distance with the city. Almost five hours had passed, and there were barely any players in view.

I glanced around, before running off to the right to enter the forest that ran alongside the main road. I knew from experience that there was a very real chance that my clothes could be destroyed during the process of enchanting magic on my items, so I wanted to go somewhere that I wouldn’t be seen.

Once I was behind a cluster of trees, I began to remove my equipment, storing it all in my inventory, and then did the same with my clothes. The only thing that I left out was a pair of shade leather gloves, and three magic stones. Although my Stealth skill was active, I can’t say that it was comfortable doing this naked in the wild, especially if something happened that would stop me from being able to quickly recover.

As I began, I made sure to open my inventory, ready to equip my regular gloves. The first skill that I enchanted on these new ones was Shadow Armor. I had specifically left slots free in my boots, leggings, and breastplate to enchant this onto once it evolved.

The enchantment process was… honestly, fairly smooth. I placed one of the three crystals on the gloves, and simply channeled the skill. I assumed that shade leather would have a high compatibility with shadow skills, so other work wasn’t entirely necessary.

Once the process was done, I braced myself, letting out a hiss as the muscles in my arms were torn, cuts forming and blood gushing out. Right away, I equipped my old gloves and activated the Heal enchantment on them. It took two applications, but I was able to recover. I just had to repeat the process two more times… once for Lesser Animate Shadow, and once for Shadow Spike.

Thankfully, there weren’t any surprises with those two, though the surprises came when it was time to actually test the new enchantments out. After equipping all of my gear again, I walked along the forest, looking for a dark region to experiment. Once I had reached an area with a rather thick canopy, I started with Shadow Spike.

When I launched Shadow Spike, a thin needle of darkness shot out from my shadow, striking a tree. It looked rather similar to the rogue that I had fought outside of Brita, though a bit smaller. It was, after all, only a level one skill…

The next that I tested was Shadow Armor. The moment that I invoked this enchantment, a layer of black mist gathered around my gloves. I furrowed my brows, realizing that the protection was only extending to my gloves, and was immediately thankful that I had left a slot free in each of my pieces of equipment.

Finally… there was Lesser Animate Shadow. When I used this enchantment, a small figure rose out of my shadow, looking like a half meter tall version of myself. My eyes went wide, and I could feel a thin mental connection with the shadow. With a thought, I commanded it to go and attack a nearby tree.

A sword similar to my own scimitar appeared in the hands of the shadow as it launched into its assault. It seems to be fairly weak, and I can’t give it any complex commands. Any time I tried to give it a command that required any form of thought on its part, the command just fizzled out halfway through the connection.

Similarly, if I order ‘attack’, it will use basic attacks. However, I could order it to use the skills that I personally possessed. It was only able to activate Martial or Utility skills, or darkness skills with the obvious exception of Lesser Animate Shadow. Thankfully, once I had it activate stat enhancement skills, it became far stronger, though still felt like it was only around a fifth of my own power.

Additionally, I wasn’t able to conjure a second shadow at the same time. If I tried, the first one disappeared. I saw a lot of potential for this skill… in someone else’s hands. With my inability to add special modifiers via channeling, the skill was essentially neutered in this state. Hopefully, the evolution will shore up some of the weaknesses.

With all of that out of the way, it was time to try out the last skill that I received, and the only Martial skill. Grabbing my scimitar, I let a black energy wrap around it as I activated Shadow Slash. Functionally, it worked similarly to my old flame enchantment, so there was no guessing on what I needed to do.

I slashed out towards a nearby tree, though I found that the darkness never left my blade. Is that the difference between the martial and magical versions? I wondered to myself, seeing the darkness fading from my sword.

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Shaking my head, I took a step closer, and tried again. This time, my blade connected cleanly with the tree, causing it to shake slightly. At the point of impact, a hazy black scar could be seen. I took a deep breath, trying again. This time, I activated my Stealth and Assassination skills, in order to maximize my damage output.

There were… two notable results from this combination. First, the scar was much deeper in the tree. Secondly, a skill window appeared in front of me, causing me to blink.

New Skill Acquired!

Wisdom (Martial - 3☆): Slightly increases Magic.

Mana Burden: 0/sec. Level: 1(0%)

“What?” I stared at the skill window. “But… how?” I looked back to what I had done, not sure how I had activated this skill. Nothing that I did was different from my normal method of acting. Certainly nothing that seemed like it would qualify for ‘wisdom’.

“Wait…” I blinked, opening up my skill sheet and began counting. “Stealth, Fast Runner, Resilience, Strongman, Studious, Perception, Ruby Rampart, Adrenaline Rush, Assassinate, Shadow Slash… I needed to have ten skills active at once in order to get that?” My eyes widened in disbelief. “No, no, that can’t be it…”

At this point, I had almost entirely distracted myself from my training, one hand on the forehead of my helmet. “There… there should be multiple ways to unlock the same skill. If the only way to unlock Wisdom was by having ten skills active at once, almost nobody would be able to get it. So, this method should be a backdoor into the skill, rather than the main approach.”

I nodded my head, feeling as if that was the only thing that made sense. Regardless, I now had the last of the stat enhancement skills… I just had to train Wisdom up to its next step, and then get all of them to level fifty.

Thankfully, I was pleased to see that the skill experience for Wisdom was already climbing rather quickly. Curious, I began to disable my skills, noticing that the experience slowed down considerably. “So… the act of using skills while it is active is how you train it?”

At a glance, I could tell how the Wisdom skill was meant to work. When you activate it, you get a temporary burst of magic, increasing your overall mana limit. However, Wisdom itself had a burden cost, so it would eventually overtake the mana that it provided. It was only designed to be used in short bursts to execute powerful skills without triggering mana burnout.

For me? The Wisdom skill wasn’t all that useful to me. There were surely some cases where having a high magic stat would be beneficial, such as if I ever get the Mana Shield skill, or if there were a barrier that needed a certain amount of magic to get through. Otherwise, the skill was being raised exclusively to fuse with the other four.

Once I knew the training method of Wisdom, I turned all of my skills back on, and began the process of training. One hand held my scimitar, swiping out with a Shadow Slash every couple of steps, while my other hand alternated between Shadow Armor, Shadow Spike, and Lesser Animated Shadow.

Acting in this way slowed my progress towards the next village considerably, but it let me get in some much needed training. Plus… after a while, I began to find monsters to practice against. I wasn’t surprised, since players weren’t as likely to dive into the woods where the visibility was low. Instead, I was rather excited at the chance to test out my new skills.

The monster in question was a corrupted dryad, a demonic variant of a helpful creature that lived in the elven forests. This one wasn’t as graceful, its green leaf clothing replaced with black and brown, a crown of thorns resting on its head while a dark jewel pulsed in its chest.

The first thing that I did was cast Lesser Animate Shadow, commanding it to activate all of its enhancement skills and attack. The little shadow let out a small roar as it charged over, slashing at the dryad’s legs. It looked down at the beast, more in annoyance than anything, easily able to jump out of its range whenever it got close. The shadow wasn’t slow, but it wasn’t fast enough to contend with this dryad. Next, I activated my Observe skill to get some information on this creature.

Corrupted Dryad - Level 40

Skills: Entangling Vines, Iron Bark, Root Stab, Poison Spore

Common Loot: Corrupted Leaf, Corrupted Bark

This was the first time that I had used the Observe skill on a monster, so I was quite pleased with the information that it gave me. Still… a level forty creature. That further explained why players weren’t venturing into the forest, as most had not likely reached this level yet.

While its attention was briefly on my shadow, I activated Stealth, my body fading into the shadows. The dryad glanced up, looking where I had been standing in alarm. Its gaze went left and right as it jumped up to hold onto a low branch, out of reach of the shadow’s slashing attacks. Clearly, it was on guard against me now, knowing that I must be hiding nearby.

I won’t be able to hit it with a Shadow Slash when it is up there. Not one that can deal fatal damage, at least. Instead, I commanded my shadow to launch volleys of Shadow Spike. It seemed to inherit my traits, as well as my equipment attributes. In other words, it could only cast Shadow Spike by raising its hand towards the dryad, at which point thin needles began to rise into the air one after the other.

The dryad let out a feral hiss as the needles stabbed into its dangling legs. It reached down, forming a fist, and a dense, wooden spear jutted out of the ground, completely impaling the shadow. The connection with the shadow was instantly broken, but it had bought me enough time to switch to my bow.

The dryad slowly pulled itself up to stand on the branch, its eyes narrowed as it scanned the surroundings. For a moment, I thought that its gaze fixed on me. However, by that time, I had already drawn the bowstring back, an arrow of solid energy condensing. With my Assassinate skill active, I released the arrow, which drew a thin line of light in the air.

Over the last week, I had spent almost all of my free time training my archery. My Bow Proficiency was at level nineteen, and I was generally able to hit where I was aiming, so long as the target wasn’t moving. Thus, when I lowered my bow, the headless body of the dryad collapsed to the ground.

I walked over to collect the loot, and what I saw… stunned me. After collecting the loot, there was a green charm in my hand, looking like a badge in a heart shape and covered in a thorny pattern. Is this one of the event items that Ella mentioned? I questioned, appraising it.

Forest Charm - 5s

Durability: 100%

Enchantments: 0/1

Innate: Slightly increases affinity with forest creatures.

I didn’t see myself needing that innate effect anytime soon, but… at least it was another slot for enchantment?