บท 10: Chapter 10 - Skill Upgrade

Chapter 10 – Skill Upgrade

A few days later, Glen entered the village, sold his loot, and went back to the inn. Glen met Bertha and paid back his debt. Bertha happily took the money and Glen was relieved that he finally paid all the debt.

Glen got to his room and the room was now not the same as before. It was filled with books and there were almost a hundred of them. All these books were not from Bertha.

Glen met all the villagers and asked whatever books they had because he needed the knowledge in the book. He had borrowed hundreds of books, journals, or notes from the villager, and the data saved by Data Saver had increased a lot.

Glen might not be able to view what data was stored but he could see the results when he used his Beginner Appraisal skill. Some of the books noted the common beasts in the prairie and thus, Glen was able to view their upgrade methods when he appraised the beast.

Even so, most of the methods were unconfirmed because they were all deductions from all the data he had. As for the confirmed method, they were all stated in the books but there were many problems with them such as hard-to-find materials.

Other than that, Glen managed to learn a few basic scientific methods from reading the books. Thus, the method mentioned during his appraisal was more detailed than before.

There were still methods like boiling, soaking, stirring, and stuff but with the added data, a procedure such as distillation, condensation, filtering, pipetting, detailed weighing, and so on were added.

Be that as it may, Glen was not able to do any of the scientific procedures because he did not have the apparatus to do it. He needed to buy them from nearby towns or cities and they cost a lot too.

So, he needed more money. However, he could still start his profession immediately at the moment with the crude method stated by the skill as long as they were not as ridiculous as boiling the beast in hot water.

"If I want the players to trust my upgrade, I need to show them some results first. The best place to start is with Aunt Bertha," Glen decided to upgrade Bertha's pet beast first. If the upgrade was successful, the players and other villagers would trust him.

"But first, I better upgrade my pet beast," Glen looked at Bubbly. After saving more knowledge and data, Bubbly's data was updated a lot. At the moment, only Bubble beast and Thick Bubble beast had the most data when he appraised.

So, there were almost a hundred methods to upgrade them using various kinds of materials. Still, all of them were unconfirmed methods because true to what Bertha had spoken before, no one had ever been able to upgrade a Bubble beast.

Even so, Glen did not plan to upgrade Bubbly as a whole. He wanted to upgrade only a small part of Bubbly. Thanks to the added knowledge and data, Glen found out that he could upgrade a beast's specific skills.

For example, Bubbly's useless bubble skill could now be upgraded to a useful skill. There were a few methods available and Glen wanted to try them. If the skill could become useful, Bubbly's fighting ability would increase.

Relying only on two skills made his fighting style to be limited. With a useful third skill, he could vary his fighting style a lot.

The useless bubble skill was not the only skill Glen could upgrade. The other two skills were upgradeable too. Not only that but there was also information about how Bubbly could learn new skills too.

Glen wanted Bubbly to power up as much as possible so that they would hunt a more dangerous beast… for money. He needed money the most if he wanted to try all the more complex upgrade methods.

As for why Glen wanted to upgrade the skill instead of Bubbly as a whole? The reason was simple, the more powerful the beast as a whole, the rarer the materials they needed for the upgrade.

There were unconfirmed methods available using common materials but the procedure was super complex and without proper equipment, he would fail miserably.

So, when Bubbly was still weak, he should grab this chance and upgrade whatever he could. Once Bubbly reached the limit, he would move on and upgrade Bubbly as a whole.

Glen appraised Bubbly and went to the skill section and clicked on the useless bubble skill. The data on how to upgrade the skill was available.

There were tens of them and as usual, there were ridiculous methods too. "I don't want any method with a success rate lower than 80%," Glen spoke and all methods with a success rate lower than 80% were filtered out of the appraisal.

Still, thanks to the added knowledge and data, there were a lot of them and even some ridiculous methods were still on the list.

"I only want methods using the common material," Glen spoke, and once again, the list was filtered. Even so, there were still many of them. This was due to Bubbly's low rank, stage, and tier.

Glen read all the methods available and he filtered the one that he felt impossible and hard to achieve at the moment and a few minutes later, he was only left with ten methods but he picked the easiest and the best among them.

Skill – Bubble

Grade – E [0% Mastery]

Effect – none

Improvement Method

Material – Colorless Stage Water

Procedure – Use Bubble Skill on the Colorless stage Water and maintain the skill for as long as possible. Repeat the process a few more times until the Bubble is strengthened.

Prediction – Combat Power [10%], Physique [50%], Energy Power [20%], Last longer [90%]

Difficulty – Easy

Rate – Unconfirmed method. 90% success rate

Material – Colorless Stage Water

Procedure – Soak the Bubble beast in the Colorless stage water and use the bubble skill while soaking. Repeat the process until the skill is strengthened.

Prediction - Combat Power [10%], Physique [70%], Energy Power [40%], Last longer [90%]

Difficulty – Easy

Rate – Unconfirmed method. 95% success rate

Material – Colorless Stage Water

Procedure – Distill the colorless stage water and get about 1 liter of the distilled water. Let the Bubble beast use the bubble skill on the distilled water a few times until the improvement succeeds.

Prediction - Combat Power [40%], Physique [70%], Energy Power [40%], Last longer [90%], Unknown effect [90%]

Difficulty – Medium

Rate – Unconfirmed method. 99% success rate

After Glen had stored a lot of data and knowledge using Data Saver, the way it showed the upgrade method had changed a bit.

There was now a prediction on what would happen using the method and there was a percentage on how high of a possibility for it to happen. Other than that, there was a difficulty shown for using the method.

Glen chose these three methods as they were the easiest in his eyes. Although the third method had medium difficulty, it was due to the distillation method. Glen did a distillation experiment in school many times and thus, it was easy for him. Even without proper apparatus, he could still do it.

All he needed was to boil the water on a fire and condense the steam of the boiling water using a mirror of anything that could trap the steam.

As for the Colorless Stage Water, it was normal water that he could easily obtain in the inn. The name of the water changed because Glen could appraise the water. When he appraised the normal water, he could see the rank and stage of the water.

Similar to the coffee table, the water had no rank but it was appraised as a Colorless stage. Thus, the new name. Not only the water but many other non-living things were now classified in this way when he read the method.

Glen contemplated on which method he wanted to use. "The first two methods are the simplest and easiest and the second method is better if I compare the two but the unknown effect of the third method is more attractive," Glen mumbled.

"I wonder if the first and second methods will still be available if I use the third method?" Glen thought for a bit more and decided to go with the third method. The reason was that he wanted to try his luck for the unknown effect.

Glen met Bertha and asked her permission to use the stove in the kitchen. Bertha said okay but he needed to wait until midnight.

A few hours later, it was midnight, and Glen was allowed to use the kitchen. He brought along with him a mirror from his room to trap the steam but then, he realized there was a lot of metal pot in the kitchen he could use for that.

"So, what are you going to do?" Bertha asked. She was curious about why Glen wanted to use the kitchen and she came along to see him.

"Hehehe, when I read all the books I borrowed from everyone, I got an idea for an upgrade for Bubbly. So, I want to try it," Glen replied.

"Oh?" Bertha was interested and she decided to wait and see.

"Urm… this is a trade secret. So, I cannot let you see it," Glen blushed. He did not want others to see his method. All Upgrade Specialists had this rule too.

"Hmmph!" Bertha was annoyed and left Glen alone. Glen peaked outside the kitchen and saw that Bertha was gone.

"Let's start!"