"Enchantment? You're telling me that with Enchantments of high enough grade, I turn can turn relatively normal items into godly cheats?!" Elizabeth said, after talking to P about what exactly she had gone through to earn Fire-type Affinity.
"Yeah, I mean… You just experienced what can happen with Souljade. The original stone had about as much worth as the Quartzite you've refined. But after adding some Space, Time, and Fire-type Enchantments the rather tame recording properties of Souljade turned into an instantaneous trial site."
"Ok?" Elizabeth said, still half-doubtful. But thinking back to what she went through, that hellscape that froze time and put her in an alternate space… What grade of enchantments would be capable of all that? What made the thought even more frightening was the fact that she already knew there were Affinity stones for Bad and Mediocre-Tiers of Affinity. If just the Trash-level trial put her close to losing her sanity, how awful would the higher level trials turn out?
With every terrifying though her imagination conjured, more and more cold sweat would drip down her face. But thanks to P, the hollow feeling Elizabeth experienced quickly died down. P said, "Anyways, it seems your talent for picking up fire has impressed **********. He's even boosted the quality of reward you receive for completing the Hidden Quest."
"Hidden Que..." Elizabeth didn't even finish her thoughts as she raced to operated her functions and look up the page of Hidden Quests.
[Status
Quests
Hidden Quests:
…
Hidden Quest: A Legend In The Making (Complete)
*New) Degree of Completion: Mythical
Difficulty: Incalculable
Objective One) Obtain a Degree of Completion Rating greater than or equal to Legendary standing. (✔)
Description: Participants of the Cataclysm need to be geniuses and those that are geniuses among geniuses are generally the type to outlive the common fodder. Attaining Legendary Standing sets a certain standard, putting oneself at the baseline level for such a genius and thus promising a fruitful chance for coming out on top at the very end.
Deadline: Unlimited (Completed upon finishing all primary Objective)
Rewards: Degree of Completion Bonuses unlocked for quests that have yet to be completed
Bonus: First Stage Cataclysm Participation becomes optional. However, choosing to opt out will cause your standing to depreciate...
**********: As P********* would say "Wowzers." You just keep surprising me with every other move you make! With just this stunt you've safely crossed out of Stage One's eye-opening battle! However, unless you want to get a lower quality servant, I'd recommend you partake in the event. At your current rate of progression, I'd be pretty hard for you to die anyways. Unless of course, you're luck… Nevermind….
Hidden Quest: Elemental Newbie (Complete)
*New) Degree of Completion: Mythical
Difficulty: Dependant on the user
Objective One) Reach Trash-Tier Affinity with any one elemental energy type. (✔)
Description: In the path of cultivation it is important to keep oneself prepared for any and every kind of situation, and while it may be tempting to focus solely on one energy-source's path to advance in, it may not always be the best choice. As a Time Mage you'll naturally major in Time energy, but succeeding in cultivation with a secondary energy-type will redouble the versatility of your overall cultivation.
Deadline: Unlimited (Completed upon finishing all primary Objective)
Reward: Basic Flames Control Sutra
Bonus: Blaze Black Spirit Art]
Elizabeth thought for a moment before she asked, "Mythical? How much better is that than Legendary?"
"The rankings for Degree of Completion are as follows: Abysmal, you barely pass the quest. Sub-par, even the average cultivator of the same rank blows your performance out of the water. Par, you're comparable to regular cultivators of the same rank. Excellent puts you at the same level as geniuses of the same cultivation rank/stage. Legendary upgrades to a genius one rank higher, Mythical puts you at least grade higher than legendary, Perfects makes you equal to Transcendental figures of the past, and Transcendental means you've broken a multi-dimensional-wide record to become number one across all dimensions."
"Whoa, what would I have needed to do to reach Transcendental for the Affinity Quest?" Elizabeth asked, very curious as to what the record for fastest time to reach Trash-tier currently stood at.
"Transcendental? Well… the current record stands at ten days..."
"Che! I probably could accomplish that too! If I had the two fire cultivation manuals before taking the stone, it would have been a piece of cake!"
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"Um… Try not to get depressed, but the person who finished reaching Trash-Tier in ten days. Let's just say, he was equally unprepared to tackle the hurdle… That lunatic passed the trial held within a Trash-Tier Water Elemental Affinity Stone without any prior knowledge of water-type energy; just like you did for the Trial of Fire..."
"What the fuck? My 159 Days sound like a joke when compared to such insanity..." Even though P warned her, Elizabeth couldn't fight the urge to swallow bitterness. The difference between Mythical and Transcendental were but two grades apart, yet reality made the difference much harsher.
"Well, even though it's true what I said, if I remember correctly, the guy who established that record majored in Ice-type energy. So by proxy of similarity, he had a comparatively much easier time understanding water with his insights into ice. It's kind of like how time and space are related, so for you, deriving insights for Space from Time are easier to do than say… for Fire, which has a rather weak connection to Time in the grand scheme of things."
The information P shared did very little, if anything at all, to cheer Elizabeth up, and to P, this was worth celebrating. P was glad Elizabeth stood unsatisfied with her already impressive Mythical achievement as it meant that she didn't accept being exceptional. She wanted to strive for greater standing and that was exactly the kind of mindset that was needed to stay ahead of the curve and survive through the harsh trials that awaited her.
Elizabeth got over the bitterness in comparing herself with the person holding the current record. She didn't quite comprehend what being number one across "all dimension" meant, as she had only been exposed to her home dimension and the Shadow Realm. Even then, all she knew from her home dimension was Earth, and from the Shadow Realm, she had only been exposed to the Forest of Beginnings.
Instead of wasting time, pitying herself for not being good enough, Elizabeth focused on finally starting up the forging process she had postponed for long enough. She accepted both the [Basic Flames Control Sutra] and [Blaze Black Spirit Art] from her rewards pending page, and after properly digesting the contents of which were useful to her at the moment, the long-awaited refining of Quartzite resumed.
Almost immediately, however, it became apparent how much, possessing so-called "Trash-Tier" affinity for fire, benefited her, as Elizabeth instantly felt the drain on her Inner Strength cut down to half of what it was previously. She had yet to start practicing the methods of the two fire cultivation techniques and already the effects were promising.
It only became more outrageous as Elizabeth spent about 10 minutes refining down Quartzite to the alert of her Status changing once more. This time, it was to notify her of her advancement to Basic-Tier proficiency. Only… she reached Basic-Tier in not only Refining for Forging, but her Cooking Skill's Heat Control also advanced, even though she wasn't cooking…
The notifications were received, but not much time was spent celebrating as life had become a series of ever-changing goals. Elizabeth continued refining Quartzite until her 692 units of Inner Strength were completely consumed and as she pulled back to check how much she had processed, a tepid smile dawn on her face. Whereas before she could only get through about 25 grams of material processed if she only focused on refining. Now, with both Heat Control and Refining reaching Basic-Tier, as well as with her fire affinity reaching Trash-Tier and her Inner Strength capacity increasing to 692, she could get through about 80 grams per cycle. And that wasn't even the end of her progress, as Elizabeth could tell with a Status check that unlike before, the Quartzite she was currently refining had a Refining rate of between 71-73%; a vast improvement from the 65% of her first experience with refining.
Over the course of three hours, Elizabeth got through 11 or so cycles of refining materials and replenishing Inner Strength. Included in that elapsed time were the breaks Elizabeth took to use the restroom as even though her digestive system's performance was improving with the rise of her cultivation, she wasn't at the point of not producing any waste and eating a whole refrigerator's worth of food alongside the meals she ate in the Shadow Realm were more than enough to make cross her body's increasing barriers.
As Elizabeth finished up the last bit of Inner Strength she still had on refining, she momentarily thought of continuing to work hard and dig into the next refrigerator, beginning yet another session of potion production. But, upon gazing at her side and seeing the unplugged TV, she felt like she deserved a break. It had been close to an entire week with little to no breaks and while it was fun watching the numbers in her status shoot up, all while feeling the effects of her training first hand. She wasn't a robot programmed to just train her life away. Instead, like most other people, there were limits to how hard she could focus on prioritizing productiveness. Even when she was a gaming fanatic, there were often points where she couldn't stomach the thought of continuing staring at her gaming monitor.
Right now, she was awfully tempted to swipe her table clean of all the materials and forging tools, and plug in the TV to laze away what was left of the day. And perhaps if she hadn't just come out of a limbo-esque torturous purgatory, her focus on improving would take a bit longer to die down. But, that was not the case and adding on all the other absurd experiences she had lived through in the past week, Elizabeth reached her breaking point. So... she did as her desires wished.
Only, instead of throwing away her work with the swipe of her arm, she gently set the contents of her table aside on the floor. It might be refined Quartzite, with a stable enough structure to survive disgusting amounts of damage, but Elizabeth didn't want to risk scratching her work before it even saw battle experience…