The Systemic Lands

Chapter 617: Day 5,108 – Super Skill Point

Thankfully I didnt have to go far to reach a level 7 zone, and there were two of them next together between The Abyss and New Kochi. I had just finished clearing an entire zone and was looking at the cube that had appeared and the open doors on the side that led into darkness.

It was frustrating to be caught in this position. I was used to fighting the Swirling Ice Spikes of Illusion, but I had no doubt the boss monster would be much more difficult. If I kept waiting, then I would psych myself out of going through the doorway. I walked into the inky blackness.

I stumbled slightly as the terrain changed around me entirely. Gone was the thin cold air. Instead I was on a large gray stone platform. Checking behind me there was nothing. No doorway or anything else. The platform was circular and I appeared to be in the middle.

Some kind of spatial transition. The energy in the air was incredibly thick. Death comes, I heard the mental words, but couldnt pinpoint where they had come from.

Hello. Can you let the Almighty System know there is a problem? I mentally sent out. There was no response. Beyond the half sphere space I was in, was just swirling gray mist, that had light coming through it, but not much. The entire area wasnt dark, but it wasnt well lit. There was no over either.

Death comes, the monster sent the exact same words at me.

Well, that is just great, I muttered. I felt something moving at me from behind. Air Burst. Acid Shot x10. We both missed. I couldnt see the monster. The mist continued to swirl around the arena.

Fine. I can just go overboard. Acid Shot x1,000. I aimed in every direction and waited. There! I spotted the outline of the monster at it rushed at me. Force Shot x20. The remaining Acid Shot on the monster and the skill had annihilation reactions. I followed up with several more attacks to finish it off. It wasnt as tough as the sphere and wasnt as good at reacting to high pressure situations with solid defense.

As I blasted away the last remnants of the monster, I felt that was too easy, since there was no crystal drop. Death comes.

Really? Some way to have a clone or something to die in your place? A summoner in the mist? I muttered out loud as I looked around. The gray stone underneath me was as solid as tower building material. I wasnt going to be able to damage it, not that I thought there was anything worth digging up.

I approached the mist while keeping an eye out for the hidden monster. I poked my little finger into the mist. There was a very clear delineation between mist and no mist. Even more than the mistlands. It reminded of the roads that cut through the mistlands, creating a tunnel like environment.

Quickly pulling my finger at the danger I felt, I saw it slightly corroded. Also, the energy there felt damaged as well. So, no going into the mist. The arena was quite large. Like the plaza but only circular. It had more space than the reflective chamber around the sphere.

Death comes, the monster communicated via energy.

Yeah, death comes. Thank you. Oh, so helpful. Now maybe you can fix everything that is wrong with your creator or ring them up on the helpline, I sarcastically said. There was no response, not like I was expecting one. Still it would be nice for the Almighty System to communicate back instead of these insane monsters it made.

It made me wonder if the sphere was a level 10 monster, and that was why it could hold a rational conversation. Or if it was truly from out the Almighty System? I shook my head as I needed to focus on this fight. Where was the boss and how did it not die previously?

All fights were battles of information. Me trying to get information on how the monster fought. The monster failing to get me in a meaningful way. I began to walk about the arena as the monster occasionally taunted me. Trying to track where it was based on its communications wasnt working. The energy it sent out was too subtle for me to pick up on.

That would need to be a technique I worked on in the future, since high level monsters liked to communicate about my impending demise, and a stealth monster made it much trickier to pin it down. I dodged another attack with Air Burst. Acid Shot x100.Force Shot x5. The damaged force the monster from invisibility, but I didnt move in to finish it off.

It was probably another decoy. The monster was made of ice spikes. Another Swirling Ice Spikes of Illusion, but a level 7 from the looks of it. It had better reaction times and movement than the monsters I had cleared from the zone I had just been in. It was definitely a summon of some kind.

I had picked up tricks from working with Michelle. There had to be a connection of some kind. There were many moving parts to the monster, with no clear core. Still, from fighting its counterparts in the zone, one ice spike was more important than the other.

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Even with my experience, I couldnt pick out the right one, as I dodged the attacks from the monster as it chased after me, now that its illusion was broken. I shifted about the arena to see how it would react. It was just a bit slower than me when I used Air Burst, allowing me to stay ahead of it.

Oh, now there was the connection point. There was a slightly denser concentration of energy with a different flow at one point on a single spike. It kept moving to face a specific direction. The level 8 monster was keeping its distance from me, but it wasnt afraid to move across the center of the arena, more make movements that brought it closer than it needed to come as I moved about.

I had missed the tether link before, since it was normally facing away from me. That was a clever aspect of this fight I would have to remember. Air Burst x5. I blasted across the arena. Acid Shot x100. Force Shot x20. I hit something and a much larger ice spike monster appeared. Well not entirely, since its spikes were blades instead.

Once the main monster appeared, I unloaded targeted annihilation combination attacks to finish it off. It took a lot of hits, but finally went down. The smaller monster had tried to intervene, but I had finished it off without worry. This was the extent of a level 8?

Sure, it had put up a fight, but it was about as tough as the golems I had fought in the block terrain. Difficult to destroy, but not impossible. What remained of the monster turned to dust. On the ground was a spherical point crystal. That was probably worth 3,024,000 points. Then there was a diamond skill crystal floating above the floor.

Finally a set of doors with blackness in between them appeared in the middle of the arena facing me. Well that was a boss fight. But why have an arena in a space like this? Why not just have a roaming boss? Another thing that made no sense about the Systemic Lands. I made my way to the skill crystal and gave it a poke.

I had to spend a moment to mentally process what it was offering.

General Skill Boost, Select Upgrade

The skill point would create a permanent upgrade on a skill. That could be altered up and down, this would affect other aspects of the skill. There were 15 upgrades, but with Minor Effect focusing on type, it really was 17 upgrades.

This skill point was a super skill point. From what I could understand. If picked cost and power, I could scale them both to their limits. This would affect other aspects of the skill I hadnt upgraded yet. That was all the information I got. But it broke the level limitations on a skill.

Someone could just get these super skill points and then use them for any skill. Even a low level skill, and it would become fully scalable if one got all the upgrades related to that skill.

It was honestly too convenient at this point in time. Right when I didnt want to upgrade my skills since it would put me on the backfoot for the next round with the sphere. It was hard not to see a conspiracy theory with this kind of coincidence. I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to let go of my anxiety and focus in the moment like Clarissa had encouraged me to do.

Speculation would get me nowhere at the moment. The question was what skill and what upgrade to pick. At least that was an easy question to answer. I picked Acid Shot and power. The skill crystal disappeared, and I felt knowledge get deposited in my head. I almost felt like I could feel my brain itch as energy moved inside of me.

Acid Shot. I focused on scaling up the power. Ahhh! I let out a scream as there was a massive explosion of acid right in front of me. Air Burst. I quickly retreated. I tried again, but only trying to add a bit more power this time, instead of trying to quadruple the power. Acid Shot.

There was more energy used up as part of the skill, but instead of a sphere of acid, it was much more wobbly and less held togeather. It was also slower and smaller from what I could tell. Adjusting one parameter impacted everything else about the skill.

Also, the energy cost was much higher than the small increase warranted. If the base skill at level 6 with two power upgrades was 6.2, then this skill felt like it was a 6.3 but the cost had gone up from 20 energy to 40 energy. A massive increase. I tried again, and the cost rapidly shot up and the skill became worse and worse in other aspects. Falling apart, moving slowly, and getting smaller. All the while the energy cost quickly escalated.

Not a magic bullet, I said out loud. It made me both feel better and worse. It was everything else that the Almighty System did. It seemed great, but had lots of conditions attached to it, which were headache inducing. It made me think this was set up beforehand and wasnt related to the sphere or other stuff going on.

Still, it could have been a better upgrade. And there was no meta-point either. Well, that might have been too much to hope for. Still, I had options now. I would need to get as many upgrades as possible, but I also needed to get points. Level 7 zones were scattered about all over the place and werent common. Also, I had only cleared so many level 6 zones not even daring to look at level 7 zones until I got my meta-point just recently.

That meant I would have to search for them, and time wasnt on my side. I would have to grind what I could and then rush off to find high level zones, maybe. I would need to think through the upgrades first and determine the minimum number of upgrades that needed to go on a skill to make it usable. That made me think of something.

Acid Shot. I called out and pushed up its power. Nothing changed. But it probably would if I got the silence upgrade. It made sense. Getting a better result from taking a penalty. How annoying, but it made sense with how it all worked. If a skill had all the upgrades, it would be quite powerful with a lot of energy behind it.

There were probably more complex nuances like why have multi-cast when you could just upgrade the size. Lots of small targets maybe. I didnt have much time to figure out what I was going to do. But Purgatory needed the crystals I could get. It came down if I wanted to trust in my combat ability, or depend on the team effort, or some mix of both. Not an easy question to answer.