6 Chapter 6: Burning Sands (II)

System, open my current stats.

Name: Paolo Guillarme

Class: Magician

Level: 1

Skill points: 6500

System points: 10000

Reputation points: 0

Stats:

STR: 10

VIT: 10 +5

AGI: 15 +5

INT: 50 +10

DEX: 10 +5

LUK: 25

Hidden Stats:

Huh. This past month seems fruitful for my clones. I already have around 10000 system points, and if I expand my map radius by 2 kilometers, I would have 8000 points remaining.

That's still enough for emergencies. Alright. System, use 2000 system points to expand 2 kilometers in my map view radius.

<Expanding... Complete.

Current radius: 5 kilometers.

Refreshing map... Complete.>

Alright then, let's level up some skill branches. Given that this place is fire attributed, I should check the pure water skill branch.

Elemental affinity

-Water bolt

-Water ball

-Torrential Bolt

-Waves

-Whirlpool Drive

-Aquatic Storm

-Waves of Calypso

-Leviathan's Rage

-Tiamat, the Goddess of water

-Water Origin

The names of the spells alone were quite domineering. Sadly I can't view the skill description of the latter skills until I unlocked the previous skill. Oh well, there's plenty of time.

I unlocked [Water Ball] and leveled it to 5, the minimum requirement to unlock the 3rd water skill, [Torrential Bolt] . Similarly, I leveled this skill to 5 and unlocked the 4th tier skill [Waves] . Unlocking each skill costs me 1000 points each time, and leveling each to 5 costs me 500, 1000 and 1500 points each respectively. It seems the 2nd tier skills and above had different skill point costs.

I wonder what would happen if I unlocked the 10th tier skill [Water Origin]? Similarly, the other elemental skills had Origin as the 10th tier skill.

________________________

I eyed the beast right in front of me, and identified what mutated animal it was.

<Fire Ant Worker, 1 star beast

HP: 2500/2500

Its most powerful move lies in its pincers, which can rip apart steel.

Moves in packs. Be careful of sneak attacks!>

Oh? It showed the Health points remaining. This is quite great as it simplifies the process of hunting.

I wonder why the previous lion-like beast didn't show me the HP when I checked the description.

System, do you know why?

<Only 1 star monsters and above can show the Heath Points in quantified mode. As host's level is lower than the beast, you cannot perceive the health points.>

Yeah, I'm still confused concerning leveling. How do I even level up?

<The host can level up by using system points. The system points needed per level increase by a multiple of 2, starting with 10 system points.>

So that means, to reach level 10, I would need 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560 = 5110 system points??

Damn that is harsh. What do I gain from leveling besides enabling me to see the health of the monster?

<You gain 10 free Stat points everytime you level up. Your base stats will also increase on its own. The skill costs will also decrease by 0.5% every level.>

....Goddamnit, I've been tricked again.

Whatever, I'll level up after this beast. For now, time to test out the skills.

Immediately, I casted water ball.

[Water ball: lvl 5

A ball of rapidly rotating water elements. The longer the cast, the stronger water explosion.

The damage of each water ball is enhanced by intelligence*2 + Base damage + time casted per second*Base damage

The number of water balls casted depends on total intelligence/10.

Splash damage is dictated by distance in centimeters*(15 + intelligence points)

Base damage of 20 points, maximum of 500 points damage per water ball.]

The mathematical calculation piqued my interest. If I casted the water balls for a second, I could still deal a damage of 160 per water ball, and since the maximum I can cast is 6, I could deal 960 per second.

I could kill one of these ants in less than 4 seconds.

Immediately, I launched the water balls towards the ant. It managed to dodge the first one, but the latter 5 balls hit the target cleanly.

I thought about this problem. What if I actually combined the water balls? Would the damage be greater?

I decided to test my hypothesis. Immediately, I summoned another 6 water balls. The first one, the second, the third, all the way to the last water ball fused properly, and created a water ball that was 5 times bigger than the original.

Now here comes the moment of truth. Will my damage be limited to 500 points or will it be multiplied?

I launched the modified water ball towards the wounded ant.

Immediately upon contact, the antvs body was ravaged as if it was hit by opposing waves of power.

It was dead.

Wow, quite surprising for its damage output.

But here comes the next problem I had to face: Do I have to manually combine it everytime?

The casting itself took 2.5 seconds, and the damage output seems to be better if I casted the same spell three times in a row.

My thoughts were interrupted by the system.

<Host, congratulations for modifying a 2nd-tier spell. Would you like this modification to be done to the 2nd-tier spell [Water Ball] ? This would increase the cost of the spell when leveling up 2x times.>

If I could fuse it easily, does that mean that I could fuse the basic spells for each element? Where there is a giant bolt that contains every element and destroy my enemies?

Just thinking about it made me shiver in anticipation.