74 Advancement into another Advancement

Shortly after sending Ystur away to Kretea, Astur notices she has a new unread message from someone unexpected. Taking a look at her phone to see it's from Zrathno.

The message reads: "I want your help with building my next mech. You're the only Alchemist I know of so I need you to enhance my materials. I'll be arriving in a couple of days."

"Can you not," Astur replies before storing her phone away.

Throwing herself back onto the sofa, Astur lets out a deep sigh, "What a pain…"

As Astur threw herself onto the sofa, Blaze had arrived at Astur's house in time to hear her lament. As an experienced gamer, her first thought is that this could be a chance to trigger a quest.

Walking over to Astur, Blaze asks, "What's wrong."

"An uninvited guest will be arriving in a couple of days. I might need to shift some of my plans for the city around to prepare for this. Anyways, I made something earlier, give it a try," Astur says pulling out a small vial of purple liquid and giving Blaze a quest.

[Quest: A Small Trial (Rank F)]

[Description]: Astur made a new product and needs someone to test it. Drink the small vial and report the effects to Astur.

[Rewards]: +6,500 EXP

A simple quest with a decent reward and no failure or rejection penalty. Seeing the free experience in front of her, Blaze quickly accepts the quest and drinks the vial without even inspecting the contents.

But it doesn't even take a second for someone on her stream to point out that she's afflicted with a poison status effect.

"What did you feed me!?" Blaze asks.

"Poison. What else did you think a purple liquid would be? But don't worry about that, tell me about the effects. Once you tell me I'll give you the antidote… just hope it works."

Blaze reluctantly gives in, even if the antidote doesn't work and she ends up dying, the EXP from completing the quest more than makes up for the loss from dying. Taking a look at her status, there are a few noteworthy things about the poison. The first is that the debuff duration is unlimited, meaning that her health will continue to tick away unless cured directly with the proper antidote. The second is the type of damage being dealt, sometime earlier, Blaze had been poisoned while trying to do a quest, but the effect back then had a duration of a few dozen seconds and dealt a flat amount of damage; however, Astur's poison does a fixed percent of her total health every second. But the most important thing about Astur's poison is that it reduces all healing on the afflicted target by 60% and repetitive heals from the same source are further reduced over time up to 80%.

"Hmm, turns out I made something quite nice. And here," Astur tosses green vial to Blaze.

Unfortunately, as Blaze attempts to catch it, she whiffs her hand. She fumbles around trying to catch it after her first attempt but fails each try as the vial shatters on the floor. Blaze pitifully looks towards Astur but isn't spared a glance as she averts her gaze and moves towards her workshop.

"I only made one," Astur shuts the workshop door behind her.

Left alone, Blaze can only watch her health drop while her stream chat laughs at her misfortune. Eventually, her body shatters into particles of light and quickly reappears at the respawn spot in Aeternum.

Meanwhile, Astur is looking over her Alchemist Advancement Quest. Thanks to these two items, the poison and the antidote, Astur has almost met the requirements to finish her quest.

"I only need to make one more high-quality item with a Rare Grade or higher," Astur thinks while deciding what to do for her final item.

Creating a Rare Grade item alone isn't particularly difficult for Astur, nor is creating a single high-quality item. But making a high-quality Rare Grade item is much more difficult for Astur right now. Most of the high-quality ingredients that Astur can obtain right now are common ingredients and most can't be used for making Rare items. Likewise, the rare and uncommon ingredients that Astur can obtain aren't particularly good in terms of quality. For Astur, the best ingredients she can get come directly from her body. The poison and antidote she brought out previously were made using her blood, which allowed for it to pass as a high-quality Rare Grade item. But she is starting to run out of ideas.

"Perhaps I can try making a health potion," Astur thinks.

Drawing some blood, Astur begins to experiment with various healing agents. After a couple of hours and a few synthesises, Astur manages to find a set of ingredients to bring the quality of the finished product up and give it a Rare Grade, even if just barely.

"Finally done," Astur thinks, turning in her first Advancement Quest.

[Quest: To be an Accomplished Alchemist (Class Advancement Quest)]

[Description]: Create 5 items of at least 'Rare' grade. All items must have a quality rating of 60 or higher. All items must have at least 2 traits. Items with a grade higher than 'Rare' will count as 2 items. Cannot use items that have been made before this quest has been issued.

[Submittable Items]: 5/5

[Rewards]: Will obtain the 'Skilled Alchemist' Class.

[Failure Penalty]: Will forever be locked out from advancing further. (Applied upon quest rejection as well).

With the completion of the Quest, Astur is granted the next Class in the Alchemist line, Skilled Alchemist. Unlocking the Skilled Alchemist Class, most of her previous Alchemist Class Skills have been enhanced. The effect of Draw Potential has been brought up to 10%, each part of Improved Synthesis was brought up by 5%, Essence Boost's effect has gone up from 5-10% to 7-12%, and Property Removal allows for its effect to be used on two items during synthesis now. Her passive talent, Item Novice has also changed to Advanced Item Knowledge, increasing the effectiveness of items made and/or used by Astur from 8% to 16%.

As far as new abilities go, Astur has gained a few.

[Function Over Form (Active)]: At the end of synthesis, reduce the quality of an item by 40% to increase its effect by 40%. Cost: 4,000 Mystic Force. Cooldown: 3 minutes.

[Form Over Function (Active)]: At the end of synthesis, reduce the effect of an item by 40% to increase its quality by 40%. Cost: 4,000 Mystic Force. Cooldown: 3 minutes.

[Nigredo (Active)]: During synthesis, cleanse all ingredients through fire turning them and the finished product black. Increase the quality of all ingredients by 100% and the finished product by 200%. Additionally, increase the item Grade by 2 (Can't go beyond Legendary). After activating this skill, stopping the synthesis process will result in a loss of 80% of Max Health, Max Health being temporarily reduced by 50% for 1 month, all healing effects are reduced by 80% for 1 month, and Nigredo's cooldown will be doubled. Cost: 30% of Max Mystic Force, 30% of Max Stamina, 30% of Max Qi, 30% of Max Mana, additionally, synthesis time will be tripled and will drain 10,000 Mystic Force an hour during synthesis. Cooldown: 4,380 hours.

The first two skills are good in their own rights, each serving a different purpose. Lower item quality also reduces durability and make the item more prone to malfunction. Trading quality and stainability for power and vice-versa.

But the third skill stands out to Astur. Ignoring the black visuals, the effects of the skill are amazing. Increasing the quality of each ingredient will increase the quality of the finished product and then it will be further increased upon competition. But there is a big downside, the high synthesis time when using the skill coupled with the massive penalties for stopping the synthesis midway.

Normally, it isn't a problem for Astur to pause mid synthesis for a couple of seconds to take a potion so she can restore her Mystic Force and other resources, but using this skill won't allow for it. This means not only is she going to need to plan for having a lot of time, but she also needs to make sure there is someone else around to feed her potions otherwise the synthesis will forcibly cancel if she runs out of stamina or Mystic Force.

Another bonus from her Class Advancement is that the conversion of her Mind Stat to Mystic Force has been increased from 35 to 50, the Endurace to Stamina conversion also went up from 25 to 30, significantly increasing the size of both resources.

And as the last bonus from her Class Advancement, all her equipment had their Growth passives trigger, increasing their stats. Her shirts Vitality was brought up to 80 and its Mind up to 100. Her trousers had their Vitality and Endurance both raised to 80. Her boots have been raised their Endurance up to 100 and Agility to 50. The gloves have had their Strength raised to 60 and Mind to 120. The coat had its Intelligence Stat raised to 90 and Vitality to 70. And finally, her mantle had its Intelligence and Mind Stats raised to 90 and 100 respectively. Additionally, the set bonus which increases the effectiveness of items both made and used by her from 50% to 75%.

"For the time being, I probably won't be able to use this skill," Astur sighs as she begins to allocate the EXP she's gained since she received her Advancement Quests.

Thanks to the players being so generous to donate their hard-earned EXP to Astur for the items she makes, she has just enough EXP to level up the Skilled Alchemist Class to level 10, leaving her with only a few hundred points left. But even if Astur still had EXP to use, she wouldn't be able to do so. As Astur's total level hit 60, the ability to allocate her EXP has been greyed out as a new Quest pops up.

[Quest: Power of Infinity (Race Advancement Quest)]

[Description]: Break your current limits and ascend to a higher life stage. Challenge yourself and defeat strong foes. Gain a total of 300 challenge points. You can only gain points when defeating opponents of level 50 or higher. 1 point from level 50s scaling up to 10 from opponents at level 60 and higher. Battles must last at least 30 seconds.

[Challenge Points]: 0/300

[Rewards]: Will immediately grow a second tail. Level will unlock.

[Failure Penalty]: Will forever be locked out from advancing further. (Applied upon quest rejection as well).

"Great… I finish one Advancement and another one pops up."