Creating a Legend (8)
"I should spend today recreating some of the skills I have saved up from yesterday."
With his new found method, it wasn't impossible for him to achieve this goal. It took only two days for all the processes to be completed, and the results were undoubtedly better than the original skill references.
In total, apart from the Blood Burn skill Ray showed so generously, Ren again three other skills. He gained an earth related skill, Earth Stomp; an Ice related skill, Icicle Barrage; and a fire related skill, Firestorm.
With these new skills, Ren didn't waste any time testing them out the very night. It was all just as he had expected. Surely, he couldn't have gotten an amazing ability like Absolute Replication so easily. There were limitations to the ability, much as Ren already thought, and those limitations were all similar to his own speculations.
It was easy, since he was a Lightning Swordsman, his elemental affinity was Lighting, so that naturally meant that he couldn't use skills related to other elements effectively as he would use the lightning element related skills.
One of the drawbacks of using skills related to other elements was the fact that the force consumption to activate or use the skills was always more than what it should be, sometimes going as high as double or even triple the original requirement. For this reason, if anyone was unfortunate enough to unlock a skill not of their element, they normally just abandon it.
Well, there was a way to counter this, and it was greatly linked to the prowess of the individual. If they had good affinity with their element, the penalties for using skills of other elements would be reduced, and vice versa. Well, there were many skills not tied to any elemental affiliation, so there was no problem with those.
Even then, there were still some elements that weren't affected as much, and given Ren's affinity with the lightning element, the penalties were reduced even more.
The elements Ren could still use with little drawbacks were fire, water, wind. Apart from these, every other element would give some problems. Of course, Ren knew of these facts when creating the earth and ice element skills, he just wanted to test them out to see how much their strength was affected with his high elemental affinity.
'Well, guess I won't be using them so often.'
Regardless of the other skills, the most impressive was the firestorm skill that had AOE effects and was much stronger than the name let off. The range was also pretty wide, all that was left was for Ren to test it out in an actual battlefield to see the damage, and of course, he knew of the perfect place to go.
'Putting aside the energy consumption, the skill is good.' Ren thought to himself as he walked back to his dorm block.
To test out the skills, Ren made sure to go as deep as he could into the forests of the academy to avoid any major disturbance, even though he still left a pretty big scare on the environment. Knowing that it wasn't anything new and that the academy made sure to check the forests regularly to maintain it, he could always destroy the wildlife without remorse… well, there was little wild life to begin with, so it wasn't like he was out there erasing countless rodent communities.
Ren ran into Ashley on his way back, more like he spotted her on his way back since it was one sided. She was walking together with someone else and giggling like a girl in love… which she was. 'That must be her boyfriend then? Girl don't just laugh like that with anyone.' Not that he was a love expert himself, but this much was clear.
"Hi, Ren! Long time no see!" Ashley greeted Ren who was walking past them.
'… And since when did we become so close?' Ren thought in his mind.
Ashley was an ever happy and positive type of person, so maybe that was the cause? But even then, the sense of familiarity as if they actually knew each other was very unprecedented.
"Hey…" Ren could do nothing but wave emptily at the couple. Of course, Ashley waved back enthusiastically, as though greeting a bosom friend.
"Is he 'that' Ren?" Her companion asked.
"Yeah, he is! We don't know each other that well, but you could say we are close acquaintances?"
"I see. Wow, you know all the top students in our set then."
"Hmm, you think? I haven't really thought about that."
They continued talking while Ren made his way back to his room.
'If she has started dating, then the second syndicate event is close.' Ren said to himself. This time he wasn't bothered, since he didn't plan to go on any rescue mission in-particular.
'Tomorrow's a Saturday, so I should prepare to visit the portal station.' Even if he says so, there wasn't really much to prepare for since he already had all the important information he needed, not to mention, he was about to challenge a level no one had come back from before.
'I'm sure it'll be fine, though.'
Ren took a quick look at his inventory to see what he had in there. He had pretty much sold off all he labelled as not useful and left only the best, so his inventory wasn't so buffed up as it normally looked.
CURRENT INVENTORY
-50 Health potions
-14 Stamina potions
-35 Force recovery potions
-2 vail of goblin blood
-Fallen Warrior Commander Phantom x 6
-Fallen Warrior Battalion x 2
-Instant Level up Card x4
-Random stat Increase x 10
. .
'Yeah, there should be no problems at all.'
To say the least, Ren was a little amped knowing that there wasn't any particular detail mentioned concerning the dungeon above level 25 in the original story, and since no one had returned from it before, there was no information he could get his hands on in this world either. If nothing else, the fact that the rewards he would get from clearing this dungeon would be beautiful were enough motivation for him to risk it. That aside, he had confidence in his skill and strength.
'I also haven't distributed my stat points yet, I should do that now.'
. .
-{Status}-
Name: Ren Ashburn
Class: Lightning Swordsman
Level: 26 (experience bar)
.
Strength: 33 >> 43
Agility: 51 >> 76
Force: 60 >> 70
Physique: 30 >> 50
-Remaining stat points: 65 >> 0-
.
[Techniques]
-Weapon Throwing-
-Lightning Footwork-
-Parkour-
-Boxing-
-Guarded Swordsmanship-
-Extreme Swordsmanship-
-Silent steps-
-Eagle's Sight-
.
[Innate Ability]
Absolute Replication
.
[Skills]
Passive: Lightning Body, Serene Mind
Active: Lightning Impulse, God Speed, Slash, Clouds of Thunder and Lightning, Detective's Sight, Earth Stomp, Icicle Barrage, Firestorm, Blood Burn
-Remaining stat points: 8-
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone