When the plot-skips players into the game world

Although he couldn't see the effects now, Aiwass had long memorized the effects of these two rare skill effects.

Helping friends grind through advancement dungeons, he could recite the random skill effects that popped up...

Good deeds bring good karma.

"Tainted Light" is a high-tier skill effect that, in theory, can be fully activated three times.

Its effect is such that when a spell that exclusively uses Light Attribute Mana deals damage, it adds an additional third of that damage as poison damage. Upon activating this skill effect a second time, another third as cold damage is granted. When activated for a third time, it adds yet another third as shadow damage.

If one were to fully activate this skill effect all three times, they would end up with a straightforward 100% bonus damage. Additionally, because the bonus damage is composed of three different damage types, it's not easily negated by attribute resistances.

However, this Path of Devotion attribute is also quite limiting in use.

It only activates with spells that consume pure Light Attribute Mana, and the spells must be of the damaging kind.

The "Priest" career within the Path of Devotion doesn't have any direct damage skills.

In the whole Path of Devotion, only "Temple Guardian Monk" and "Fire Worshiper" have attack spells. The latter's spells are almost entirely fire-attributed, with just a few attack spells made of pure Light Attribute Mana.

Although once the "Light Affinity" is activated, Priests do gain an energy-based auto-attack ability... this path feature is generally chosen by "Temple Guardian Monks."

After advancing to "Lion of Sakyamuni" at level fifty, this career can access a key feature allowing the use of all non-Dark Attribute spells below the third energy level exclusively with Light Attribute Mana, converting all inflicted damage to Light damage, and gaining spell effect penetration through Light Attribute resistance.

Paired with the class's low-level instant cast spell "Lion's Roar," and the fully stacked "Tainted Light" attribute, this creates the premiere build of version 4.2, the notorious "Tainted Lion's Roar" school of play—translating the additional 100% damage boost entirely back to Light damage, combined with innate Light Attribute resistance penetration, results in an extremely powerful pure DPS career, with high sustained damage, complete control, burst capability, and all of it being area of effect damage.

In various point-defense and speed-clear type of events, this school of player is very popular.

And the officials did not nerf this school of play; they didn't change any values. Their balancing method was very straightforward—

They substantially reduced the frequency at which point-defense and speed-clear events appeared, while temporarily increasing the frequency of siege activities.

Because this career wasn't ideal for sieges.

The Lion of Sakyamuni's damage conversion and resistance penetration were limited to minor skills. The major skills used during sieges still dealt mixed damage, and not benefiting from resistance penetration. Coupled with the poison resistance bosses typically boast, the end result was definitely less than a 33% increase.

What truly caught Aiwass's attention, however, was the second path feature.

Unlike the Path of Devotion's "Tainted Light,"

this skill effect wasn't exclusive to the Path of Devotion but was a universal purple rare skill effect.

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It was also a container-type skill effect, but it only appeared on careers that could acquire two types of attribute mana at the same time upon leveling up.

Not more, not less, exactly two types of mana.

For instance, Mages who receive four types of elemental mana—wind, earth, water, fire—upon leveling up, and Demon Scholars who only receive Dark Attribute Mana, would never roll this skill effect—unless they made a pact with a "Flame Demon" or similar demon, thus balancing their acquisition of both fire and Dark Mana.

Its effect was simple and practical: it increased the level of both container skill effects by one.

This also meant that it could be used to freeload a container skill effect or to elevate a container skill effect that was normally capped at LV3 forcibly to LV4.

Transcendents had a limited number of advancements, so skill effects that saved an advancement were valuable.

The strongest Transcendents in the current version were only in their forties, which placed them at the fifth energy level—the so-called fifth energy level, meaning they possessed five path features, corresponding to their path's skill effects.

Apart from the Path of Wisdom, which gains double mana upon leveling up, other spellcasting Transcendents typically had to pick one or two container-type skill effects, so at the very least, they wouldn't be at a loss.

Because for spellcasting classes, the mana granted from leveling up was simply not sufficient.

The mana rule is such that in the first ten levels each increase granted one point, from level 11 to 20 was two points per level, from 21 to 30 was three points per level... and so on. Multi-color careers added points in sequence without decimals.

For non-spellcasting careers, their mana became increasingly abundant... but for spellcasters lacking an auto-attack, mana was never enough.

"Elemental Affinity" refers to the Mage's manaless auto-attack. Although it could reach up to three levels, few careers would go for it.

Healers, in general, were typically short on mana.

The intensity of dungeon battles was bound to escalate.

"Illumination" and "Rite of Fire" required burning vast amounts of Light Attribute Mana to maintain, with Illumination needing a point of Fire Attribute Mana as an igniter with each activation.

When selected, the container skill effect granted 14 mana the first time, 28 the second, and 42 the third.

Fully stacking it three times would result in an additional 84 mana points—such a mana reserve could sustain healing for an entire high-intensity battle on its own, nearly enough to revive a dozen or so people on the brink of death with severed limbs or internal injuries.