It had been a pain in the rear to cross salt lake. It was a bit too far to fly across. I went to the nearby swamp and melted down a tree. I had then used Air Burst to glide across the salt water. While there were no visible monsters within it. I wasn’t about to be stuck in water combat.

I reached the dungeon and quickly killed the floating rock monsters. The two options were Radiance Blast and Death Blast more short range and area of effect than a beam skill. I went for my third upgrade for Acid Shot.

My choices were multi-cast, prep and hold, and minor effect. Prep and hold was not useful for a skill like Acid Shot which I needed to spam. While minor effect and getting death energy added in again would be useful to direct counters to my skill, it wasn’t a PvP choice. It was a grinding choice. I had to stick to my goal to build up my skills for PvP combat.

I picked multi-cast. “Acid Shot,”x3. I only needed to say the skill name once and three spheres of acid appeared. Good. I would need that to cut off movement options. That gave that most critical of numbers a slight increase. The number of times I could use my skill before being close in on.

I quickly left and rushed to my log. I hopped on it and laid down in the small cut out portion. “Air Burst.” I shot off across the water as a skill propelled missile. “Air Burst.” I kept spamming the skill over and over since my energy tank was massive and I had nothing to save my energy for.

I reached the shore and rushed East. I soon spotted the terrain feature of the next zone. Large stone rocks. I quickly approached them and found a pit with thick green mist. I entered it and noted the mist was pushed back from me. Probably the Aura stat if I had to guess. Since it helped resist environmental effects.

I raced through the dungeon. With my stats it was incredibly easy and I only had to concern myself with level 3 monsters doing damage to me. I found the boss room and just killed the swarm bugs quickly, raining acid down on everything. The skill crystal appeared floating in the air.

I gave it a poke. Death Touch and Summon: White Swarm Bug. Both completely useless to me. I needed to pick my fourth upgrade for Acid Shot. The options were nullification, persistence, and minor effect again. I picked nullification. I would pick that option again for upgrade number nine.

Nullification was the superior option for countering all those energy resistance types. It was important in my mind to get around those types of defenses, since I didn’t have another way to beat them. Acid Shot was my only method of attack.

It was making me rethink what I would pick for my fourth skill. Imbue Reform was good, but I wasn’t sold on it after fighting the Envoy. It was clear that having more attacks were needed. A mental attack was fairly high on my list at the moment. That way I could take out other people directly.

The annoying thing though was that I had already used the skill point from Esperanza’s dungeon with Mind Jab. I would need to reset Acid Shot to get that skill. That wasn’t going to happen. I would need to find a better level 3 skill, which was sub-par to picking a level 2 skill and upgrading it. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

I had made my decisions and now I had to live with them. Going back and resetting skills to get the optimal build was pointless when the time was better spent grinding and training with my skills. I hated not doing everything in the optimal manner, but that was life. It was messy, annoying, and you just had to keep moving.

I left the dungeon and kept racing to the West. I was glad I hadn’t run into other teams. Clarissa had let me know that the one that would be in contention would the one to the South and Southeast of Esperanza. That was why I wanted to time showing up to them right when the deek switched over so I could steal them out from under the city.

Stacking up skill points like this was a bit crazy, but that was the amazing thing about having such high stats. I could just bum rush them without a care in the world. It was far better this way. Once I got my stats high enough, I would rush level 3 zones, but that wouldn’t be for a while most likely, only when I could grind a level 5 monster and could defeat any level 4 monster.

The biggest risk of level 4 monsters was getting mobbed. That was a good thing about the shield monsters the Astrologer had pointed me towards. There were singular monsters. No death swarms. That was truly priceless knowledge, even if he was a complete ass and hadn’t repaid me anywhere near enough for the position, he put me in.

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Still, I could respect his decisions to put a bomb in me, even if it really, really pissed me off something fierce. It would be exactly the kind of thing I would do. Be nice but have a reserve option. It made me wonder when the Astrologer did the deed. But with his disguise skill and ability to float about, he could have easily gotten me any time I was sleeping outside.

It wouldn’t even be hard to find me, since he had already done that a couple of times. I would need to rethink my night procedures, since I could easily be attacked while I slept. My Perception stat should help with that, but I felt unsure about it. Also, the Astrologer could be completely making it all up for the laughs.

Thinking about the situation was an endless circle, which is why I ignored it for the most part. The only option was to get stronger. I hadn’t forgotten that from my early days, but I had grown way too complacent. Taking it easy, days off.

When the Divine Empress was chained or dead at my feet, and I was the strongest without question, then I could take a breather. Even then, there were probably other people or things out there that were coming for me.

What I really wanted to know what was at the end of all of this? What was the peek of power? System level, where I shoot out monochrome waves that change the entire environment and battle over the void?

I let out a long sigh as I saw a plateau ahead. Grasping hands came out of the ground and environment try and grab me, but I raced right past them. I got to the cliff face. I pushed my hand into the stone. It went into it like hard putty, but I could get a grip. Thankyou Body stat.

I began climbing hand over hand up the cliff face. At least there were no flying monsters. That would have been annoying. At least the hands were not coming out of the cliff face. I reached the top and finished off the larger more powerful hands.

It was easy to wipe them all out and get the skill point. The options were Sadness Touch and Piercing Ray. Both were meh and I went for the upgrade. I took the fifth upgrade for Air Burst and chose silent. While it was tempting to go with gestureless, with my Body stat I could make hand signs much faster than I could speak.

I had been practicing quite a bit to speed up my use in both areas and speaking was slower by far. Also, it clued people in much more than hand signs. There was no way to work out a skill from hand signs during combat.

I leapt off the plateau. Air Burst. I landed on the ground. I then ran followed the swamp line to the Southeast. I reached the middle of the next zone. I then turned to the West and went through the swamp, watching out for the monster trees. My danger sense from Perception came in handy and the monster trees were slightly different visually from the regular trees with how their bark looked.

I reached a pit in the swamp on top of a small hill. I entered the dungeon. It was hard to see. Roots kept coming for me and it was a slog through the wet tunnels. I basically just plowed my way forward with Acid Shot. Just use it like a fire hose and spray all the surfaces.

It was slow going since I didn’t want to melt my boots and I waited for my acid to dissipate before advancing. Also, with the amount of Acid Shot I was using I needed to go slow to allow my energy to recover. This dungeon was annoying, but the nice thing about a large reserve of energy, it allowed me to browbeat any opposition in front of me.

That should be my motto, more energy. Spirit had gained a lot of ground in my mind. It was really pulling its weight in a situation like this. While I needed to go slow to wait on Regeneration, that was more an overall pacing, but I wasn’t completely stopped since I had a massive reserve.

I was barely able to make anything out in the gloom as well. My Perception stat wasn’t night vision, but it allowed my eyes to adjust quite well to the darkness. After fighting so much in the darklands, this wasn’t even real dark. That place was just as dark, and I had looked at it during the night. It was just a complete black wall of blackness.

Honestly the most annoying thing was the swamp water that occasionally dripped down on my head. I found the boss room. I covered the room in acid before entering. I wasn’t taking any chances. Whatever was in here died and a skill crystal appeared. The best kind of monster, one that didn’t even make an appearance and just died like that.

I walked over and poked the skill crystal. The two options were Fire Touch and Poison Touch. Both useless skills. I didn’t want any kind of touch skill. I had no doubt they were incredibly strong, but I wasn’t a melee fighter.

I picked the sixth upgrade for Air Burst. I went with speed again, like my first upgrade. This was my escape skill. Speed was the most critical. Even a little bit could make a big difference between a death blow and surviving in a high level fight.

I made my way out of the dungeon and then heard noises from the West. The sound of fighting. It was in the evening, but something was approaching. I didn’t like the direction. It was highly concerning. Great, what was coming my way?

My position outside the dungeon on top of a small hill was the best point around. No need to change that. The monsters nearby were already dead, since I had cleared the entrance and no new ones had showed up.

The sounds were the sounds of shouting and fighting. That was when I saw the first baby and my eyes went wide.