Chapter 37: The Sin Of Gluttony Is Pleased
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Ding!
[The {Sin of Gluttony} feels satisfied after having eaten so many delicious things and sources energy so far.]
[The Curse that permanently decreases your Stats by 90% within the Flaw: [Triple Shattered Meridian Physique (Legendary Grade)] has been reduced to 70%.]
[Keep the {Sin of Gluttony} well fed, or the Curse might eventually worsen!]
So far, Paul had never read about Flaws ever becoming better over time; in fact, it was the norm to believe Flaws and Traits would remain mostly the same forever. Although only a week has passed since the game's release, this is a common belief.
Aside from those that chose Random Backgrounds and Avatar generation, people were able to choose which Traits and Flaws they wanted according to the background they wrote about their Avatar character.
This made it possible for Players to min-max and create builds through this choice. Those that would dedicate completely to physical strength would get Flaws that decreased their Arcana, something they wouldn't use as much, and vice versa, for example.
And Vlad immediately felt the changes once the Curse was lifted lightly; the fivers of his muscles, his bones' weight, his blood flow, even the heat of his body, slowly came back; it was as if he had become twenty percent stronger!
"I feel so much better now; this is insane!" he celebrated. "Chris, you won't believe this!"
"Hm? What now?" Chris wondered, drinking the elixirs, and gaining some power himself.
"The curse I had lifted a little bit!"
"…PFFFF!" Chris ended up spitting some of the elixir into the ground. "W-Wha?! Agh, dammit! No, I lost some of it!"
After taking care of that, the two were able to talk things out more relaxedly, and when Chris learned what happened, he felt rather happy. Maybe there was truly hope not only for Vlad but for Alitheus as well.
"Maybe my curse could also be lifted if I do certain things?" he wondered. "But what could it be? Gluttony is easy, you just have to keep eating monsters and stuff, but what about a curse of Lust?"
"Hm, I do have quite a few ideas…" Paul said with a rather serious expression, as if what he was thinking wasn't something lewd but very serious and important.
"I would rather not know about those ideas for now!" Chris felt embarrassed, growing red.
"Why? Well, weren't you the most eager before?" Vlad smiled, his crimson eyes being rather seductive. "You even… Well…"
"S-Shut up! That's that, and this is this: different stuff, different times… A-Anyways, it got pretty late, I think I'll be logging out for now…" he said. "Tell your mom I sent my regards or something."
"Ah, fine, but wait! About the videos we recorded yesterday…" said Paul.
"Don't worry, I'll take care of them myself; we should be uploading them tomorrow or past tomorrow, I believe," said Chris. "Anyways, bye~!"
"Ah, take care…"
Chris logged out, making Paul feel slightly lonely, but he decided to concentrate on the game so he wouldn't feel so alone. Quickly moving towards his stash of items he had stored so far. There was a lot to look at.
Aside from all the Raid rewards, there were also Raid Points to use so he could purchase from a weird Raid Shop, and there were also all the precious materials he had secured.
He also needed to fix his armor and improve it, hopefully. While also probably upgrading his staff and perhaps some of his accessories. And make some new armor.
Paul had always loved crafting games, especially RPGs with crafting elements. And the new materials he got, especially that Pyrocrystal, seemed very tempting.
"I had thought about making magic guns out of this…" he said. "I had researched, and apparently there are no such weapons, or they have not been discovered so far… Well, there's only three Realms open at the moment."
Out of the Nine Realms of Genesis, only three have been open for the public to play in. The most popular right now due to its availability of cool and edgy races, and a dark and gothic atmosphere was obviously Obscuritas, the Realm of the Eternal Night.
However, there were also two other widely available Realms, whole worlds Players could visit. The first was the Realm of Fantasia, a whimsical Realm of fairytales where elves, fairies, gnomes, leprechauns, trolls, spirits, and other creatures lived—the complete opposite of Obscuritas.
It was said that this Realm was governed by a completely different pantheon of deities, whose biggest and strongest was the World Tree of Life, Yggdrasil. In this world, Players were expected to always have a Contracted Soul Spirit as their main method of power and cultivate it alongside their Spiritual Heart to grow in strength.
Over time, they can contract more spirits, spread out their abilities, specialize, and create their own fantastical builds. It was a Realm ideal for those who wanted to see magic more than anything else.
Moving on there was the other of the three Realms available, Ennead, the World of the Nine Rulers. It was a world composed of a gigantic fantastical desert, where Arabic and Egyptian culture seemed to be its biggest inspiration.
It was said to be even more dangerous than Obscuritas, filled with the tombs of ancient kings and with powerful monsters, especially giant sandworms, roaming the endless seas of sand. Large cities and a wide sea were also available, along with tropical areas, islands, and pirates.
This was the Realm where the least number of people had chosen an Avatar to live in, as it was very harsh, but it also offered even more opportunities with all the hidden tombs, treasures, relics, and ancient inheritances of the Nine Rulers, the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs-like rulers of this Realm, which were like their deities at the same time.
In this Realm, everything was based on the Cultivation of Relics, with a special Relic Soul that people of this Realm possessed upon birth and that any Player that chose their Avatar's origin to be here would obtain.
By robbing the dungeons and tombs of their treasures, they could refine these Relics and add them to their Relic Soul while constantly growing the amount of Time Sand Essence, the power that was used to activate all Relics.
Similarly to Fantasia with their Spirits, people here could expand their repertoire of Relics and obtain tremendously strong builds, but the level of starting difficulty was very hardcore; any customizable Avatar would always stay in poverty, for example.
Only if you chose Random and somehow got to be a prince or princess of a Desert Kingdom could things be better, but usually, the difficulty discourages new players from joining this dangerous place.
But Vlad was sure that eventually, those brave enough to enter Ennead would get a tremendous advantage over the others due to the nature of this Realm's Relic Cultivation, which even included things such as evolving, fusing, and transforming Divine Relics.
"I am sure that eventually there'll be events that will allow players or even other NPCs to cross Realms," he thought. "There's no way they'll stay separated forever. And with Chris, I've already learned that NPC can already cross Realms, although it is not widely known, his Father, a King of Fairies, came to Obscuritas to be with his mom after all…"
Chris was a very odd case where he had the bloodlines of two Realms, his father came from Fantasia and his mother was from Obscuritas. This gave him the ability to cultivate both the powers of Fantasia, Spirit Energy, and the ability to contract Spirits, as well as the demonic powers of Obscuritas, mostly related to draining energies such as life and blood from foes.
"The curse he received is mostly to balance this, he would be way too overpowered otherwise…" Paul thought, smiling. "Now, should I get this over first?"
He took out all the Skill-related items and decided to use them.
[Skill Book: Blazing Soul (A Grade)]
[Skill Book: Dual Blazing Blade Arts (S Grade)] x1
[Random Skill Book (A Grade)] x1
[Skill Fusion Ticket (A Grade)] x1
[Skill Evolution Ticket: Raid Boss Soul (A Grade)] x1
[Skill Book: Blazing Doppelganger (A Grade)] x1
[Skill Book: Vessel of Flames (S Grade)] x1
"Should I leave something for Chris? After all, we did promise we would share…" Paul thought. "I'll leave him two at least."
Paul decided to leave for Chris the Random Skill Book and also the Vessel of Flames Skill, which seemed pretty strong and could give Chris a very powerful fire elemental ability.
The rest? He decided to use it, even though they had creepy descriptions. These items weren't cursed after he checked them with his Sin of Gluttony, meaning he could consume them and get quick power.
His Skill Slots, however, were already almost full, and although Skills from Skill Books could be equipped anywhere, he only had two Skill slots left.
"A Skill Fusion Ticket…" He glanced at the ticket, allowing him to combine Skills. "…"
For a moment, he had a crazy idea—something that definitely wouldn't really work normally. But well, he was not normal at all himself. He had just eaten the curse out of a sword, and he knew he could even eat the sword or any magic-infused equipment if he wanted to.
He opened his mouth and, rather awkwardly, ate the Skill Fusion Ticket. It had a plastic, metallic flavor that was very disgusting, but somehow, his fangs easily crushed through it until he swallowed it with some water.
"Ugh… Hm? It didn't work… Fuck, I wasted this for nothing!" Paul realized nothing had changed. "Come on Gluttony, stop being so- Ungh?!"
BA DUM!
Before he could say anything else, he felt his entire body in flames, and his heart started beating faster and faster—something not normal for a vampire at all, whose hearts would beat once a day at most.
BA DUM!
He felt his entire body ablaze as Vlad fell to his knees, coughing blood, yet the power of the ticket he ate was still there, slowly melting away, fusing with him.
FLUOSH!
"Hahhh… T-This fucking hurts like hell!"
As he screamed in pain, he felt like passing out, but barely held on. The flames over his body were illusory; there was nothing burning him.
Slowly, the visions and hallucinations he saw dissipated, and things went back to normal. Thanks to his vampiric ability [False Immortality] he was able to regenerate the internal damage caused by trying to ingest such an item.
And…
Ding!
[You have successfully devoured the [Skill Fusion Ticket (A Grade)]!]
[The power to combine Skills has been absorbed by the Sin of Gluttony.]
[Through the power of Gluttony, you can now Fuse Skills in exchange for Credits.]
"No way, it worked?!"
He was incredibly shocked and joyous too! However, he dared not do the same with the other items, he was honestly afraid of what other torture he would go through.
Fusing Skills for someone who could obtain an endless amount of them through devouring things was incredibly necessary, but everything else? Not so much.
"Hahaha… Now that I have this, the possibilities are truly endless!"
As he laughed internally, he quickly decided to get all the Skills he could, aside from the ones he was gifting to Chris.
FLUOSH!
Each book opened, revealing colorful runes from its pages and then exploding into particles of light that imbued themselves into his body, giving him a new Skill each. For now, he decided to keep all the Skills unequipped once they were learned.
Ding!
[You have used the: [Skill Book: Blazing Soul (A Grade)] [Skill Book: Dual Blazing Blade Arts (S Grade)] x1 and [Skill Book: Blazing Doppelganger (A Grade)] x1!]
[You learned the Skill: [Blazing Soul (A): Lv1]!]
[You learned the Skill [Dual Blazing Blade Arts (S): Lv1]!]
[You learned the Skill [Blazing Doppelganger (A): Lv1]!]
"Two A Rank Skills, one S Rank Skill, not bad. If I want to use that sword, that Dual Blazing Blade Arts will come in handy," Vlad's handsome face smiled cunningly. "Now, let's try some Skill fusions. How do I do this? Is there a System Tutorial?"
Ding!
[You have activated the {Skill Fusion} function of the Trait: [Insatiable Gluttony (Legendary Grade)]!]
[You can combine as many Skills as you want, but the more you combine, the higher the Credit Price will be.]
[As you grow stronger, the price might increase even more.]
[Fused Skills cannot revert to their former ingredients, and the Skills used to create them will also disappear permanently, and you won't be able to relearn them again.]
[These Skills can be equipped in any Skill Slot regardless of their ingredients.]
"Interesting…"
Currently, Vlad had less than four hundred thousand Credits, but he knew he could afford a couple of Skill Fusions.
"Hmm…"
He quickly chose a few Skills to try it.
[You have chosen the Skills: [Obsidian Bones (D): Lv1] [Ogre's Muscles (C): Lv3] [Chimeric Body (A): Lv1] [Bat Transformation (C): Lv2] and [False Immortality (S): Lv3] to Fuse.]
[Do you wish to Fuse these Five Skills for 150.000 Credits?]
[Yes] [No]
"150k?! That's… a lot," he muttered. "But I am sure this could either give me an insane Skill, or something horrible."
Vlad was in the mood to gamble a bit.
"Okay."
He pressed [Yes] without hesitating too much.
[Initiating Skill Fusion…]
FLASH!
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and gain access to all these Advanced Chapters:
55 Advanced Chapters of
The Protagonist's Sister Is Actually The Strongest
33 Advanced Chapters of
The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns
17 Advanced Chapters of
Fantasy Story Online: The Crippled Vampire Prince Walks The Heavenly Demon Path