Chapter 425: Coming Home
Eva and co left the Rank 7 Shop, yet they were noticeably quieter than when they had entered not too long ago. Of course, it wasn't like they had been rowdy or noisy before, but they had at least been more... animated.
Roma wore a grimace as if she had been forced to eat shit while Zaine appeared pensive. Hikari seemed depressed, while Eva looked to be lost in her own thoughts.
This silence helped ward off those who would have intended to stop and chat up the Four Beauties. Even Luxia sensed the strange atmosphere and remained decidedly muted when she picked the quartet up to return them to the Aether Hall of Vita City-State.
Despite technically receiving an OP skill for virtually nothing of value, each of these women had their own considerations about the matter. As such, they split up the moment they got home.
Hikari went to the Anomaly Realm to check on Rila while expanding the borders to distract herself, Roma and Zaine were both heading to the master bedroom to settle in their babies, and Eva moved to the information center in the lower levels.
She found Sanji seated at the desk with his eyes closed. Although it looked like he was sleeping on the job, Eva could tell that he was mentally in the location where her operatives under the Intelligence Tradeskill met up to trade information.
That was the one overpowered ability of her Tradeskill she appreciated the most. It did not necessitate physical means of communication. An information-gathering organization usually had to create a cipher for their reports at various levels, but even then, there was the risk of such reports getting leaked and others being able to eventually break down the code.
Not only that, but using such a method obviously left trails, no matter how immaculate an organization tried to be. With this Epic Tradeskill though, such a thing could be easily avoided.
However, the problem with Intelligence, was that it was a weird Tradeskill. According to Steven, the network she created was for personal use and should not be sold to others.
This conflicted with the mechanics of all Tradeskills, since a Tradeskill was basically an activity that, when performed, could bring profit. If she couldn't sell the info, how could this be called a 'Tradeskill'?
When questioned about it, Steven told her something surprising. According to the floating orb, the Intelligence Tradeskill was one that emphasized profits through action. In other words, Eva was supposed to use the information she got to make her own money.
For example, if she got wind that Cario City was going through civil unrest and that certain groups needed weapons, it was her duty to capitalize on this before anyone else and sneakily supply weapons.
So, Intelligence could be said to be a 'support' Tradeskill. It either assisted the user in making their own money or could even assist other Tradeskills the user had, instead of directly producing money from its results.
However, Eva naturally could not be bothered to spend so much time on that Tradeskill. Thankfully, with Sanji's new Information Broker class she didn't need to. He could utilize his class far better than Eva could utilize her knowledge to handle the Tradeskill.
She dropped by not to inquire about his progress - as she could see it anywhere in the world if she wanted - but to give the fellow some more spending money. After dropping a few million platinum off with him for the management of the departments among others, Eva left.
She took out the Divine skill that had been burning a hole in her Inventory and learned it. Once she did, she felt the whole world change around her... or no, it was better to say that her perception of the entire world changed.
She could now feel the four basic elements with ease, like they had always been there but she had simply failed to notice them due to having her nerves blocked. Since this sensation was limited to extra-sensory, it didn't conflict with her five senses.
In other words, she couldn't see, smell, feel or hear the element, but she just instinctively knew that they existed, in what quantity they were present, and how to move or convert them if she so wished.
A Divine skill was truly a different ballgame. Unlike normal skills that required activation and worked without the player necessarily understanding the intricacies of the skill, this Divine skill embedded the knowledge straight into her head.
In other words, if this skill was somehow ripped from Eva, she would still know how to move the four basic elements. Crazy.
Eva somehow had a feeling that Divine skills might work in the real world due to the nature of them. The four elements also existed on earth - obviously - and could probably be manipulated, only that she would have to find a medium to channel them.
On earth, there was no mana and she couldn't use bloodline energy because it had never been made for that purpose. Arguing that any form of energy would suffice would be like saying that diesel fuel should work in a petrol engine because engines used fuel.
Eva put this matter aside for now. After all, she and Draco were still in the process of mastering the basics of their bloodlines and until that was achieved, such flights of fancy were just silly desires.
Eva allowed the rest of the ladies to rest for a night. She knew they needed time to digest the meeting they had with a True Goddess, so she gave them that time.
However, it could not be too long because they had many other things to achieve in the meantime. Hence, they all left the Aether Hall the next day, blazing towards the Rank 3 dungeon they had only partially explored.
..............
After acquiring her Divine Class, Rina had found herself to be in a tough spot. She was the only one who had not obtained enough experience points to jump straight to Rank 2 like the others. As such, she had been forced to grind to make up for it.
However, even with the Divine Class and her Divine Flamesear staff, it had felt like climbing a mountain while tied down by the total stupidity of the general populace. It was an uphill task like no other she'd ever experienced.
Gathering the 100,000% experience necessary for the staff to evolve had felt like a breeze in comparison.
Why? Because of the bloody experience gain rate!
She only received 10% of the experience she should earn, so her gains had been greatly limited. Luckily, the skills of her Divine class allowed her to kill Rank 2 foes with relative ease, not to mention the powers of her Divine Staff.
As such, her limited gain rate was appeased somewhat, but just because she could challenge Rank 2 foes didn't mean she could do it as effortlessly as Draco, nor in such large numbers.
Rina used to have quite a few powerful AOE skills at her disposal, but they also had cooldowns that needed her to wait a day at the least. If it wasn't for her class passive skill, Essence of Fire, which reduced all fire magic skill cooldowns by 70% below the Divine Rank, she'd have been forced to fight once or twice a day before having to wait.
To make up for it she had purchased as many fire magic skillbooks she could get her hands on and learned them to increase her arsenal. As a result, she now had a wide array to choose from in any situation, from magic barriers to fire debuffs.
Once Rina had hit the limit of Rank 1, she began stockpiling experience. During the Emergency Quest, she was one of the six survivors other than Draco and Eva who had received two Rare items and one Epic growth item from her Epic Treasure Chests.
Since she had been focused on increasing the grade of Flamesear, she had largely neglected the other item. In fact, she had practically forgotten about it because it had little use to her personally.
｢Ring of Alacrity ��� Ornamental Item
Rank: Epic
Durability: 500,000/500,000
Effects:
Passive 1 - Sleight of Hand: All skills and techniques that require the use of Dexterity are boosted by 30%.
Active 1 - Ambidexterity: Activating this skill allows the user to gain the ambidextrous talent for 12 hours. Cooldown: 3 days.
Description: This ring was crafted by a Grandmaster Blacksmith for his wife who was a talented rogue. She used it her entire life and achieved many great feats with it before eventually retiring into old age with her husband and family.
Further abilities can be unlocked by sacrificing experience points. 0% of 30,000% needed to upgrade to Legendary Rank｣
Yes, as one could obviously tell, this ring was meant for rogue classes. It had absolutely zero use for magic classes whatsoever, so the fact that Rina even held onto it up till now was a miracle in and of itself.
However, after she reached the Rank cap, Rina decided to sell it once she was done evolving it. Selling it at the Epic Rank and at the Legendary Rank were two different things altogether.
The reason was simple. She never wanted to end up in a situation like when she was about to Class Up, where extremely heavy pressure had been placed on her shoulders for spending someone else's money.
Rina was a money-grubber, so spending the money of others normally made her feel at peace rather than disturbed. However, she could not muster the same mentality towards Umbra due to what the guild meant to her as a whole.
Had she had her own money, she could have activated the Class Up procedure without having to burden herself and Umbra. A pretty noble goal from someone like Rina, but it did make sense given her experiences up till now.
Not to mention that Rina wanted to gather money to allow her mother to Class Up nicely as well. Even though Holly hardly fought or explored and enjoyed it more like a lifestyle player, Rina still wanted the best for her mother who had looked after her all her life.
And so, she had been grinding nonstop for the past few weeks after all the members of Umbra had Classed Up. She had upgraded the Ring of Alacrity to Legendary Rank, and her new goal was to fill her inventory with as many drops as she could get and sell them.
｢Ring of Alacrity - Ornamental Item
Rank: Legendary
Durability: 1,000,000/1,000,000
Effects:
Passive 1 - Sleight of Hand: All skills and techniques that require the use of Dexterity are boosted by 100% and the use of stamina is reduced by 20%.
Passive 2 - Fleetfoot: Movement speed increased by 50% when crouching or in stealth without compromising detection.
Active 1 - Ambidexterity: Activating this skill allows the user to gain the ambidextrous talent for 24 hours. Cooldown: 1.5 days.
Description: This ring was crafted by a Grandmaster Blacksmith for his wife who was a talented rogue. She used it her entire life and achieved many great feats with it before eventually retiring into old age with her husband and family.
This item has reached its pinnacle and can no longer be evolved.｣
Rina had subtly hoped that the ring would develop a second passive that was at least semi-useful to her, but no. As the description said, that Grandmaster Blacksmith had specifically made this for his wife who was a rogue.
Naturally, the effects of the item would be solely geared towards rogues like his wife. Rina just felt that it was a shame since she had spent 25 days grinding out the necessary experience for it.
Though it's value would definitely be higher, so there was that. With her inventory chock full of resources, items, and everything else of value she managed to get her hands on, Rina recollected her now powered up Fire Elemental, Little Blaze.
After doing so, she sat in the blimp-like ship manned by her goblin friend who had been carrying her around the various Area Zones during her journeys when leveling up Flamesear, as well as now when she was farming experience for her class and items.
As the balloon slowly rose into the air and sped up towards Cario City, Rina settled down and began to count her spoils. Her face became strange when she saw some items within, for she truly hadn't checked what things she tossed in there.
Her killing rate had been too high, so the drops had naturally been plentiful. Little Blaze was also the one to grab the ones that were useful and then upon receiving them, she threw them in her inventory.
Now that she stopped to appraise them, Rina realized that she held onto a real goldmine.