The thing jumped in a second twisting around midair to land on the ceiling Grinning Randidly had it jump around more before he noticed that the connection between them was slowly waning as it moved the mana he had used to animate it was being used up
Randidly summoned two more and began to experiment After around an hour he sat back
They weren’t going to be that useful in a fight but he could use them for other things The only offensive weapon that the Root Spiders possessed were slightly dull teeth formed of roots They appeared to also have access to a poison that was based upon his Pollen of the Rafflesia but Randidly suspected that although he wasn’t exactly sure how strong the people he would face would be they would be more than enough to endure his poison
But they could be used as scouts or at least as alarms He couldn’t see through their eyes but they would warn of movement and could give him a general impression of what was moving past them enough so that Randidly could discern who it was that was moving In addition they traveled very quickly with their powerful root legs and distance at least in terms of within the city
Not that he needed anything guarded currently but they were interesting for the future Especially after he discovered that flexing his mana while he created one took almost 1 5x as much mana but made them the size of a small dog If nothing else it would be pretty disorienting to have one use its powerful legs to throw itself down off the ceiling and smash into your head from above
Randidly took one last look at his status screen but realized that his experiments had earned him 2 Skill Lvls in Plantomancy which gave him enough PP to finish off Fighting Proficiency
Congratulations You have completed the Fighting Proficiency Path Your path walks through valleys of darkness where violence abounds With your head held high you advance Because although your fists become bloodied with violence it is only thus that your feet can continue to tread And the path leads ever onward towards the next mountain towards the next Haven Reaction and Willpower +5 You have gained the skill Struggle Lvl 1
Struggle Strain against your fate in fights refusing to give him Gives an extremely small passive boost to Willpower when you are faced with adversity Amount increases with skill level
Contrary to expectations Randidly received another passive skill from the other path It looked like one that was more ambiguous almost to the point of being useless Although Willpower was the stat that got Randidly where he was today due to Shal’s need it wasn’t particularly useful in a fight But still every little edge counted Especially when Willpower was one of the first stats that let him grow in this world
As he didn’t have anymore PP Randidly put off the decision in regards to his next path and instead focused on what he should do this night in preparation for the qualifying melee tomorrow
Randidly grimaced God he hated dealing with people And from what Shal said he would be forced to encounter quite a few people in order to make it through In the end he simply had to be on one of the platforms when the round ended But what if someone else came up onto the platform He didn’t necessarily have to fight him but if Randidly didn’t what if more people came up onto the platform If there were too many
Then Randidly shook his head Pointless to worry about strategy That wasn’t his strong suit Better to focus on his other preparations The obvious first choice was preparing consumable stores He had quite a few blue and red energy shards with him as well as 1 or 2 purple and green ones So he could create potions if he wished it
But there weren’t so many that he wouldn’t run out of he used them too quickly As such Randidly planned on simply waiting to make potions until he found a source of potion ingredients Still he was in a good spot for that Randidly suspected that since this was a world that had been with the system for a while there would be places to buy potion ingredients and even potions
It would be excellent if he could even obtain the higher tiered potion ingredients to try or found a recipe book for high level potions That way he could increase his potion skill
But purchasing those would take money Although it was possible that he could obtain some for winning this qualifier battle or that Shal would be willing to give him some cash neither of those options seemed like they would be sustainable in the long run And depending on how much the higher tiered potion ingredients cost
Better to have another plan to handle it himself He had some small amount of the Nexus currency from trading in dead monster bodies to the recycler but that had fallen by the wayside as Sam’s crew grew more skillful at extracting parts from the monsters Better to have a commodity that Randidly could produce that would earn him some extra cash
And to that end there was only one thing that fit the bill Engraving Almost reverently Randidly removed one of the bracers he had worked on last night from his interspatial ring
Novice’s Leather Bracer Lvl 15 Leather armor worked by a novice Vit +1 Health +8
Engraving of Dragonfly 42% Wearer of the armor moves slightly more quickly when moving with the wind Wearer gains Aspect of Dragonfly I
Aspect of Dragonfly Reaction +1 Agility +1
It was truthfully a small bonus The armor that it was on was rather worthless But Randidly suspected that if he went to a local armorer and offered to Engrave his armor for him improving the armor by these two stat points and the small effect Perhaps it would be pretty tempting It all depended on how common engraving was
Randidly held out some hope that it was rare based on the fact it was only obtained by Sam through his rare Soul Skill but sincerely doubted that it was unheard of After all the spear that Shal used had a strange fluid glimmer that reminded Randidly of Engraving although it was a tier higher than he could understand
But he hadn’t seen it anywhere else So Randidly checked the time gave himself several hours and removed a dozen leather bracers from his ring These were the last of his store given to him by Sam in order to practice It was one thing to offer a single option but if he could master all three
He had come close to 40% in the past with Bear but had barely broken 20% with Fish His best option was to focus on Bear for now get that up to snuff and then slowly bring Fish up too He glanced up sighing But he could only work on this for 2 hours After all if the battle was tomorrow Randidly wanted to practice with his spear and footwork in order to adjust to his body with the stat increases from yesterday
His Root Spider hung in the corner looking at him with ambivalence None of its master’s concerns reached it It was simply on orders to wait there until someone other than its master was to come into the room and then inform its master It was a simple life that thing lived
Chuckling Randidly lowered his needle to the leather and began to engrave
Chapter 127
The next morning Randidly walked out onto the deck raising his hand to shield the sun Above him his emerald tassle flapped in the wind the golden letters of his name catching the light and flashing in an eye catching manner
Randidly was chilled slightly when he noticed that all of the surrounding boats had detached the lines they had to their boat They had several feet of berth all around them where the strangely orange colored water splashed
What’s going on Randidly muttered to himself and he was extremely surprised when there was an answer
Heh you’ve certainly stirred up trouble for us
Randidly turned and found that the speaker was the old man still sitting cross legged meditating on the deck of the boat But as Randidly turned to him the speaker yawned and straightened standing up
Good thing too The old man added I was getting rather bored