Novel Bin Chapter 53: New Skills, Power Surge!
His dashboard showed that his advanced experience potion had a little over 30 hours left on its duration.
That meant, in just over ten hours of turmoil in Death Village, Sterl had skyrocketed 10 levels!
What did that signify?
Why had that adventuring team come to Death Village in the first place? Knowing that this map hardly had any rewards, Sterl had farmed so many plague zombies and got nothing!
The adventuring team was there to level up! Because a spot like Death Village, where one could steadily farm monsters without wasting time searching, was too rare.
But for regular players, Death Village was impossible to tackle alone. They had to form teams and share experience. Even so, this map was highly sought after, which indicated just how painfully slow the leveling speed was for ordinary players!
For Sterl, factoring in the 1.2x multiplier from the advanced experience potion and his ability to clear hundreds of wild monsters every two to three minutes, the experience he farmed in over ten hours might equate to more than a year or two of progression for a regular player!
Furthermore, Sterl noticed something else.
"According to the data provided by the base, on average, it takes about a year for ordinary players to level from 20 to 30."
"And the higher the professional level, the more experience required for each level-up."
"I\'ve just leveled up 10 levels in one go. It seems the SSS-class profession doesn\'t just have high strength, the experience required for leveling up isn\'t too exaggerated either?" he concluded silently, realizing that surprises were everywhere for the powerful!
Seeing Death Village return to peace without the frenzied monster farming, and having already completed his repeatable quest multiple times, Sterl simply sprinted away from the map at full speed.
To Sterl\'s slight surprise, after leaving Death Village, he found himself in a completely unfamiliar territory: "Could this be the periodic coordinate shift of Death Village that the adventuring team mentioned?"
"And it enters a berserk state when it shifts coordinates?" Sterl speculated.
He wasn\'t panicked in the desolate area. Such a worthless place, given the poverty of the human race on Earth, surely had a base nearby for population settlement.
Sterl found an entrance to a base within two hours. Using his participant status in the Spark Project, he easily passed the authentication and entered the base. He then spent some credit points to rent a room and went into seclusion to digest his experience.
This was Sterl\'s first meditation session after his class change.
Soon, he realized this session was unlike any before. During the meditation, Sterl felt as if he was in a bizarre void.
Everything was pitch black and void, except for a central area where a giant star shone with a brilliant azure light, churning tumultuously.
While Sterl sensed this, countless specks of experience points outside the void were formed into planets by him.
Sterl found the process of his meditation and strengthening akin to creating a universe.
Then…
His aura broke through continuously!
Simultaneously, the Starlight Dragon lying on Sterl\'s wrist also refined its own experience, with its level soaring.
After a while.
Sterl slowly opened his eyes.
He had intended to act like a master and slowly exhale a breath of foul air, but the pet on his wrist gently bit the hem of his sleeve.
"Are you hungry?"
"Alright then, let\'s eat first." Sterl, feeling somewhat resigned, took out some food from his backpack, and along with it, he began to review his gains from the turmoil in Death Village.
First off, Sterl himself had reached level 30, with a significant boost in his base attributes.
His pet, the Starlight Dragon, had reached level 26, its attributes having also increased... and with the main star\'s enhancement, it brought a considerable boost to Sterl.
It was just unfortunate that the Starlight Dragon\'s next skill, like Sterl\'s professional skills, could only be learned at level 30. Without a holy ground like Death Village for farming experience, it was temporarily out of reach.
After reviewing his attribute panel, Sterl opened his quest panel to complete the ten-round monster farming quest.
He opened all ten loot spheres, along with a rare sphere obtained from completing the ten-round quest.
Ding! Ding!
With a pleasant ringing sound, system notifications flooded Sterl\'s vision.
[You\'ve obtained four gold coins.]
[You\'ve obtained two free attribute points.]
[You\'ve obtained equipment: Thousand Needles, Azure Moon Necklace]
[You\'ve obtained: Teleportation Scrolls*2]
Sterl nodded in satisfaction. The quest scroll dropped by Philip Waldo wasn\'t anything particularly great. So obtaining two free attribute points felt like a huge win to him.
The teleportation scrolls, simple and unadorned in effect, allowed one to bind to a location and teleport back using the scroll.
As for the two pieces of equipment, it was somewhat amusing—a bronze-level weapon and a bronze-level necklace, both requiring level 35. Sterl was speechless.
Not farming monsters above one\'s level meant too low efficiency in leveling up. But farming above one\'s level meant the loot couldn\'t be used, truly a dilemma.
And the last rare loot sphere, amidst a burst of golden light, dropped something—
[Skill Card: Devour]
[Category: Pet]
[Effect: Can activate the skill to devour the power of monsters after their death, obtaining extra experience points. If the devoured target is a boss-level monster, there\'s a very small chance to obtain the monster\'s special ability.]
[This skill is limited to pet units.]
"What?" Sterl was momentarily stunned, then looked at the skill description again, "Holy shit! This is awesome!"
This skill had two functions: one was to accelerate the leveling up of the pet. The second was to gain special abilities by consuming the corpses of bosses.
For example, if the Starlight Dragon learned this skill, it could theoretically grow indefinitely! Its final strength could even surpass other SSS-class pets.
Hence, this skill had one restriction: only pets could learn it, not players.
But for Sterl, this restriction was practically non-existent... except for those abilities that required special organs to execute, Sterl could freeload all the special abilities gained by the Starlight Dragon!
However, Sterl was speechless upon checking the details of this skill.
True to a reward from a common running-around quest. Even though it seemed strong at first glance, it was actually trash—
The efficiency of converting devoured monster corpses into experience was only 2%, barely enough to fill the gaps between teeth, and the chance of obtaining a special ability was a mere one in a hundred thousand.
Isn\'t this just totally useless?
Fortunately, he noticed a plus sign behind the skill book, indicating it could be upgraded.
And Sterl just happened to have some evolution points restored.
He decisively upgraded the skill!
[Skill Card: Devour]→[Skill Card: Devour+].
Sterl checked the item information again, after the upgrade, the efficiency of experience conversion was 5%, and the chance of obtaining special abilities was one in fifty thousand. It was still a trash skill, but at least the "plus" was still there.
"I refuse to believe that if I max this out, Devour will be useless!" Sterl declared fiercely.
Then, he put the skill card into his backpack, deciding to leave it be for now.
Sterl rubbed his hands together. Now down to two more gains.
First, two purple-quality skills on his skill tree were directly unlocked.
The power, theoretically accessible to second-transcendence players above level 91, was now in his hands!
The first skill was—
[Celestial Star (Purple)]
[Effect: Upon activation, conjures a celestial star to fall from the sky, causing massive damage. Under the starlight, Celestial Star will deal extra damage, include a stun effect, and provide a shield for allies within the area]
Sterl pondered for a moment. Just by reading the description, it wasn\'t clear how powerful this move was. So, it was an output skill? It has increased damage, control, and a group shield after activating the starlight domain?
In any case, it definitely wasn\'t weak.
The second skill was a passive ability—
[Stardust (Purple)]
[Category: Passive Skill]
[Effect: ①After each enemy kill, collect stardust. The amount of stardust collected is the enemy\'s level divided by ten. You cannot collect stardust from enemies lower than your level.
②Every time you collect 500 stardust, you receive a skill enhancement charge. You can choose to consume a charge to double the following attributes of any skill: output efficiency, area of effect, buff efficiency, or control effect.
All effects can stack repeatedly, with each additional stack doubling the consumption, up to a maximum of five stacks.]
"Wait a minute? All effects can stack repeatedly??" Sterl originally only glanced over this passive skill, but he was stunned upon reading the additional details.
According to this passive skill\'s description, with his efficiency in killing monsters, collecting stardust would be very quick, meaning Sterl could gather several skill enhancements in minutes.
Taking the newly acquired Celestial Star as an example, if it were stacked to the limit, could it make the skill\'s output, area of effect, control effect, and ally shield, all multiply by six??
Holy crap! That would truly be like stars falling from the sky!
Sterl imagined the scene of him unleashing his full power with this ultimate move. Second-class players... forget it, they don\'t stand a chance.
Even third-class players would find it painfully hard to withstand!