Chương 12: The Nail That Sticks Out, Gets Hammered
The system had four ways of categorizing skills. The first method was through skill books, which are dropped by demonic beasts once you kill them. This is purely a random process that depends on chance, because monsters can drop many things besides skill books, such as items, scrolls, ores, etc.
Modus had ordered Adelda to remove this aspect from every kill that Will made. Apparently, Modus said that this difficulty will 'temper' the boy and make him stronger. He also ordered her to make the boy's map and information options inaccessible. He made her modify the system around Will quite a bit, and often to make his battles more realistic and bloody.
One can try and emulate a skill from a skill book, if you do it successfully, you gain the skill permanently and the system will reward you, depending on the difficulty of the skill, for example, Will's water blade. It is a very common skill, one that the system has, thus it does not count as a custom skill.
The second method is through class changes. When you gain or upgrade a
class, it comes with new skills. These skills are often more powerful than ones gained from drops because they are more fundamental to the class itself.
The last method of gaining a skill is when a skill that already existed in your body is awakened through special means. An example of this is Will's bloodlust, which he gained through enlightenment. Will always had the potential to awaken bloodlust, but he needed a trigger, which came in the form of Modus' killing intent, and luck, a lot of luck.
Millions of beings have the potential to awaken these skills, yet extremely few, less than a handful even, end up successful from these millions. These are the strongest skills, and are outside the control of the system itself, once the user reaches a certain level.
All three of these methods are dependent on luck to a certain degree, thus it is difficult to determine the caliber of a user through them. This is where the most important category comes in. These are custom skills.
To become a custom skill, a technique must have a certain degree of difficulty to create and requires an incredible amount of aptitude to carry out. For example, even if you create a technique that you made yourself, it will not become a custom skill until it reaches its most perfect state, according to the standards of the system.
This often takes years of practice and modification to occur. It's no different than trying to create an invention, one no one has ever thought of before, and one that has an incredible impact. Skills have the same rating that demonic beasts have. This rating is based on the skill's power level and effectiveness.
For example, one skill can have more power than the other, in the sense that it drains more qi or mana from the user. However, the one with less power might have a higher rating, because it does more damage or it's more difficult to control.
Skills from skill books start from the lowest rating. Skills that come with a class start from the E- rating, except passive ones which are not rated due to a multitude of reasons. Such as, some are more powerful in one class than in another.
For example, a class like a sword apprentice would use the passive skill basic swordsmanship far better than a class warrior apprentice, because sword apprentices specialize in using swords, thus they benefit more from the skill than the warrior apprentices.
Active skills have a rather uniform power throughout, what makes the difference usually if two users of the same level use the same active skills, have the same passive skills but have different classes is the passive skills due to the influence of the class, thus they are not rated.
Awakened skills have no rating because their power depends on the strength of the user. Custom skills, however, are different. They all start from a rating of C- For the system to recognize your technique as a custom skill, 3 criteria have to be met.
First, it must have a rating of at least C- in terms of difficulty. Second, it must not be available in any skill books. Third no user on your world has used it or any technique that is similar to it.
Once you create a custom skill, you can name it, and it effectively becomes yours. There are plenty of things you can do with custom skills on your menu which give you plenty of benefits.
Usually, the creation of a custom skill is the hallmark of a player with incredible aptitude and talent. Users, who have the ability to create custom skills, are far more likely to level up faster and become powerful. The earlier a user creates their first custom skill, the more impressive their future prospects will be.
Will had only been a user for almost two days, he had been fighting virtually non-stop during that entire time, so he barely had time to think. Custom skills not only need the skill to execute, but also require a lot of time to think about. The key word is time.
If you are coming up with a work of art, don't you have to think about it for some time? Don't you have to imagine it and modify it constantly until the right thing comes out? It took Leonardo da Vinci a few years to paint the Mona Lisa. Imagine if he had done that in a few days, whilst being constantly distracted!
That is exactly what Will had just done. Adelda had never heard of a being, mortal or not, who had achieved such a thing. As long as Will survived this, he would definitely become powerful in the future.
That's when Modus spoke and ruined her thinking process. "Adelda, I want you to summon the sector boss here, now."
What? Why would I do such a thing? Will, will definitely die!
Adelda wanted to protest, but then she saw the look on Modus' face. He had a savage grin on his face. This was no longer the easy-going man she had been dealing with. This was the real Modus.
In the world of immortals, few didn't know this man; he was famous for a lot of his deeds, and a lot of his traits; one of which was his mood. When he gets a crazed look, nothing can stop him, and few will defy him.
If the rumors are true, I cannot question him while he is in this state. Otherwise, I will be doomed.
"Understood," said Adelda, with a pained expression on her face. She closed one of her eyes and waived one of her hands about.
Will I hope you survive this. You are too valuable to us, and to your world. I hope you do things carefully because the nail that sticks out gets hammered first...
....
On the ground, Will was engaging in what could only be described as death's dance. With every step he took a head would fly off, with every wave of his hand, blood would flow like rivers. With every breath he took, another creature would take its last. This was truly a sight that even Death himself would cringe at.
As Will engaged in his one-sided slaughter, many thoughts were going through his mind. He was experimenting with his water blade, trying to see what he could do with it. Its range wasn't bad and its speed was impressive. His dual mind skill made it easy to manipulate it. Unlike the wind blades from the wolves, Will's water blade was reusable.
He didn't want to waste it, so he used the same water blade again, and again, and again; to massacre the guardians. He didn't neglect his sword skills either; he often used his sword in conjunction with the water blade or used the water blade for long range attacks and his sword for short range attacks.
After some time, Will was bothered by one aspect. He was becoming too overpowered. With a wave of his hand, he could easily kill a guardian, so he started losing his finesse and techniques. Thus he came up with an idea.
He would hover the water blade in the air, and use it to herd guardians to him, then using only his sword techniques, Will would fight the guardians one on one. Instead of just blindly trying to kill them in the shortest amount of time, Will was experimenting with other aspects of combat.
I have a lot of subjects to test my skills on here. Killing them all would be such a waste.
Thus Will started trying other things, like predicting how the guardians would strike and dodging their attacks, or learning how to parry their blows perfectly, or trying to attack them from their blind sides, or attacking their legs to limit their movements.
I might need to fight an opponent I can't kill easily but I have to kill in the future, so I need to master my movements and techniques further.
If Will had known how right he was, perhaps he would have taken this more seriously.
The guardians were still stronger and faster than Will, but their intelligence was far too lacking. In Will's eyes, their actions became far too repetitive, extremely simplistic, and easy to counter.
The guardians were still somewhat intelligent, they knew full well that they were being toyed with, but their pride wouldn't allow them to run. So they continued on, in their futile attacks.
A few hours later, when only a hundred or so guardians were left, something strange occurred. All the wolves looked up in a certain direction and howled.
Will was bothered by this action and saw that something wasn't right. He decided to finish off these wolves quickly and launched a barrage of water blades on them, finishing them off. Then he looked toward the direction they had howled too.
...
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