Looking to his Skill list, Loran immediately noticed that the [ANALYSE] [DANGER SENSE] [GOAT WHISPERER] [MANA SENSE] and [SIX SENSE] were all missing.
All of them had been replaced by a completely new Skill, [EXTREME PERCEPTION].
[EXTREME PERCEPTION] Lv.1
(Passive/Active) A Unique Skill created by Loran. Provides heightened insight while in a Passive State. When in the Active State, Loran can increase his mental acuity for up to 60 seconds. When deactivated, Extreme Perception will become completely inactive for three times as long as it was Activated.
'It's active and passive?Interesting...'
The description wasn't very clear, but it wasn't that hard to understand since he had experienced it once already. Activating the Skill would allow him to enter that state of heightened perception that he had been in before, letting him process information more quickly without putting any strain on him mentally. Additionally, the Skill operated with a cooldown instead of an SP or MP cost, which set it apart from every other Skill they had seen so far. Looking at his debuff list he could see a new effect.
[SKILL DISABLED]
Remaining Duration: 2 Minutes, 48 Seconds
Complete deactivation of [EXTREME PERCEPTION]
'I guess that's the headache I'm feeling right now.' It wasn't intense, or even particularly painful, but if he tries to activate the Skill it immediately sends a spike of pain through his head.
As for what it provided while in a Passive State, it had to be connected to the fact that he was missing the Skills that were merged into it.
'My other Skills have all been lumped into this one. I guess that part about them overlapping was referring to how they're all perception-based abilities.' He began thinking about the implications of this when something occurred to him. 'When it says that the Skill becomes completely inactive, does it also mean the Passive effects?'
Testing this, he tried to sense the mana in his body, but while the feeling was stronger than when he had first learned magic it was much weaker than it normally was. Without a Skill to support him, he now had to put forward a lot more effort to cast even a basic spell.
'It's incredibly vague about what it enhances...I wonder what else it can do.'
He understood that it increased his mental processing speed as demonstrated by how easily he could keep pace with so many Iron Ant Warriors and Drones, but it also seemed to improve his ability to perform magic. The heightened concentration let him perform fire magic with almost no difficulty, and it even let him bend the rules of how much mana he could control at once.
'Merging Skills...the heightened concentration and processing speed are probably part of the original Skill Extreme Focus, but the heightened casting abilities might only exist because it merged with Mana Sense.'
Even just the enhanced focus was a powerful effect, but if there were really bonus abilities for each of the merged Skills than [EXTREME PERCEPTION] might just be the most powerful Skill they had seen since the start of the game!
'And this is just Level 1...'
After stockpiling EXP on the trip out here and killing a few of the mid and high-level Warriors, Loran currently had a little over 80,000 EXP.
'If this is like Soze's Vengeful Spite, then that should be enough to-'
"Goddamn it!" Loran shouted. His frustration was drowned out by the sound of the battle, but several players around him jerked back in surprise as he suddenly slammed the ground with his fist.
Perhaps it was because it was created by merging so many Level 10 Skills, but the cost to Level up [EXTREME PERCEPTION] was a staggering 20,000 EXP per Level.
'Vengeful Spite was already expensive as hell, and this is even worse!?'
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Loran sighed. He knew 80,000 wouldn't be enough to reach Level 10, but for it to only reach Level 5 was rather disappointing.
'Still...' Loran shook his head, snapping himself out of his mad mood. 'This is half the reason we're here in the first place. Once this wears off I can get back down there and get more EXP.'
A Level 30 Warrior was worth 5,000 EXP and a decent number of them were at least Level 26. Two dozen Warriors or so should be enough for him to gather what he needed, and with the spawn rate increase there was plenty to go around.
'For now, let's see what this looks like at Level 5,' Loran thought as he spent nearly all of his EXP.
[EXTREME PERCEPTION] Lv.5
(Passive/Active) A Unique Skill created by Loran. Provides heightened insight while in a Passive State. When in the Active State, Loran can significantly increase his mental acuity for up to 300 seconds. When deactivated, Extreme Perception will become completely inactive for two times as long as it was Activated.
'Everything gets improved?!' Loran thought, eyes widening as an excited grin spread across his face. The description of the Passive State remained the same, but the Active State apparently became stronger, able to last longer, and had a lower cooldown time.
'Reaching Level 10 should increase the Active State to 10 minutes...and maybe make the cooldown time a one-to-one rate.' Suddenly, his grin vanished and was replaced by a...complicated expression. 'This changes everything again.'
Soze's Unique Skill was powerful, but it was incredibly focused and wouldn't change his playstyle much aside from letting him ignore debuffs. Meanwhile, [EXTREME PERCEPTION] covered too many different areas, and could always be used as long as it wasn't on cooldown.
'I still need to find the right balance between magic and melee combat, but now I also need to figure out how to incorporate this into my playstyle too...and it definitely helps more with magic than melee so...' Loran shook his head. 'I'll just have to figure it out.'
A moment later, his faint headache disappeared, and the deactivated passive Skills returned. Loran pulled himself to his feet and looked out over the battle again. Yang and Alexx were taking on a heavily injured Guardian that had broken through the mound of Drones. There were far more Warriors around that area than anywhere else, harassing the two players and also holding back the Mountain Goats from the Guardian. It seemed like the wounded insect was trying to retreat, but was struggling to back up through the mound.
'Alright, I'm all healed up and I've got a new Skill to test out. Let's back them up.'
With a confident grin, Loran activated [EXTREME PERCEPTION] and walked off the edge.
Loran landed gracefully on the back of a Warrior, cutting its head off before it can react. Another one swings its blade at him from his blindspot, but he dodged that just by calmly turning his body.
'It's so much easier now,' he thought as he cut off the Warrior's arm. 'It's like the dust and noise isn't even there!'
The effect of [DANGER SENSE] essentially compiled the information from all five senses to detect what was around you, letting the player 'see' in every direction. It was less effective in situations like this massive battle because the dust, noise, and rumbling clogged up most of your senses. That didn't mean it was impossible to see or hear things through the chaos, but doing so in the middle of such a heated battle was unimaginably difficult.
But [EXTREME PERCEPTION] almost seemed to be ignoring these issues entirely. It was difficult to describe, but it was like his brain was filtering out any unneeded information. He could still hear the chaos, but only when he consciously thought about how quiet it felt otherwise, making it easy for Loran to hear the attack shrieks of the Warriors and their blades cutting through the air.
Their movements also seemed slower to him, more easy to track and predict. He barely needed to fight as he made his way closer to Yang and Alexx. He stepped over the bodies of Drones and Warriors, ducked under their attacks, and avoiding the hooves of the Mountain Goats while barely even thinking about it. When that was impossible and he did need to fight back it was even easier. Deflecting their strikes were simple, and they were so full of openings that he felt like they were begging to be killed.
'If Extreme Perception is letting me process information faster, that basically means more time to think about their movements.' Loran thought with a grin. 'How much easier can this get!?'
He sensed a couple Drones jump at him from behind. With barely a thought, he formed three Mana Spikes along his back and fired them. With [EXTREME PERCEPTION] at Level 5, the amount of mana he could control went up massively and he could now control 70 mana, a 250% increase! With so much mana making these spells stronger than ever, they easily pierced the heads of the jumping ants and Loran kept moving, attacking and tossing out spells without ever slowing down.
Unfortunately, his new Skill may let him control more mana, but it didn't increase his MP recovery. By the time he made it to Yang and Alexx, his MP reserves were down to 20%. Still, he had made it to their side, just in time to behead an Iron Ant Warrior that was about to do the same to Yang.
"LORAN!?" Yang shouted. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"
"LESS TALKING MORE FIGHTING!" he shouted back. "I'VE GOT THE SMALL FRY, YOU TWO DEAL WITH THE BIG BOY!"
The two heavy hitters nodded and turned to focus on their target. They weren't entirely sure if Loran could handle this many enemies on his own, but they could sense his confidence and decided to trust him as they jumped toward the Guardian.
'Okay bastards,' Loran thought as he checked his EXP supply. 'I'm going to need another 92,000 from you all, so bring it on!'