Hidden history

Jules understood he needed to find out about half of the traits on his own.

It was not like all these leftover traits were super rare; it was just that the traits after the 5th were peak traits. Any serious player would not reveal these peak traits to others.

Even though he did not find any descriptions, he saw multiple sites that added the 6th and 7th primal traits to the list of the strongest primal traits available by default.

However, most of these lists also included traits that other species with primal connections could get. It was not Shakhan's exclusive list.

After understanding the rarity of traits, he even searched for famous A-grade and S-grade players with Shakhans.

But except for a few fake ones that got exposed, none admitted to taking Shakhans at these grades.

Well, he understood them because, based on trial grades, there were famous species choices that players preferred.

There were many better options for A and after grades, from dragons and beasts to angels, demons, and even giants.

Then there were also unique choices that few players got.

It was the same for him. If not for hiding his grade, choosing the unique ghost species could have been a better choice for him.

When he searched for the Shakhans' range, he found that D and C-grade players prefer to choose the Shakhans.

At those grades, Shakhans were the strong option, as each Shakhan came with primal traits. It was just that at higher grades, multiple humanoid groups beat Shakhans in terms of uses.

Still, it was not like there was no one crazy enough to choose Shakhans at higher ranks. It was just that those players gained enough strength that they did not want to reveal much about their species' traits.

Among these silent players, he also found this star player from a famous guild at the Solar Cluster level.

He was the pioneer who played the game from the time of its launch. Even though this guy did not reveal his grade, many believe he got an S in his trial. 

Now that Jules was searching for these things, one thing clicked in his mind. There was no speculation or prediction on the grades after the S grade.

He did not even notice this in his last life, but now that he knew it, it felt so bizarre.

He could see the forum players guessing all kinds of random stuff. Things like this celebrity being an alien or this politician being a mixed-race pig, and other random stuff.

Even with all this nonsense, no one ever talked about grades beyond S.

This intrigued him so much that he stopped moving and searched for the grades after S.

He found multiple years-old videos, the latest of them being published 3 years ago, so around 1 year after the game's release.

In his past life, he never looked at these old videos created when the game was new to the world. This was completely new for him.

As he scrolled through the videos, he learned that there were multiple speculations about ranks beyond an A. In the initial days, grade A was the highest grade people believed in.

There, he found the most-viewed videos on how there was no grade beyond S. This video explained the incident that made everyone stop yapping about rank after the S grade.

The video showed a rich player who tried to reach the highest grade possible.

This rich guy hired around 500 players under him, and all of them entered the same planet.

In the trial area, they choose the chain quest. What happened then was that after the initial round, others failed this task, and only the rich guy was left alone to do the chain quest.

From this point on, all these 500 players started helping this guy do all the quests.

Around 500 players were grinding to find the limit of these tasks, trying to reach the end. They succeed to an extent, reaching as far as double digits. Everything came to an end at the 25th quest, where the quest was to eliminate every single beast outside the village.

That was their limit, as no matter how much those players hunted, this task never ended. Few others tried to repeat this, and even they failed around the 24-26th quest.

Everyone accepted that as the limit for the player. The rich guy and others who did this experiment all got S grades. This solidifies everyone's beliefs. 

After this incident, he saw many videos where players ridiculed all those who speculated about higher grades than S.

All of this was super old, as now players understood that a player did not need the 24th task to get an S grade.

In Universal Online, there was a concept of sharing contributions. All the chain quests allowed multiple players to take similar quests, but the key was individual performance.

In this experiment, 500 players worked for the rich player. The 500 players split the experience points from the quest. But only the rich player had the quest, so only he got his share of experience while the other portion got wasted, as no one else had the quest.

It was not like if no one had a quest, then only the key player would get the experience. In this game, all those experiences would get wasted.

From what Jules knew, this was a new concept that most of the prior games did not have.

So here, even though this rich guy did 24 quests, every time he only got a little experience point from each. Even with that, he reached an S. If he did the quest alone, then at most on the 14th to 15th quest, he would get the same result.

Now what if someone reached the 24th quest alone? Well, he did not know for sure, as for most, reaching the 10th quest was the limit. The few top players got S grades from the 12th to the 15th quest; beyond that, no one knew.

They might reach beyond SSS if possible, but that was only a dream.

He even doubted if some get anything beyond S rank from individual quests. The only shortcut to this system was unique mass events.

They were extremely rare, but what set them apart was their design, which provided a massive split experience among the players. Once someone started the mass event, all the payers automatically got these quests.

He read somewhere in his past life that a few of these events had sufficient experience to push all the players' experience from one to two grades.

In these events, one doing better would mean he was stealing the experience from others. It was a war of progression among players.

Still, starting the quest and using it were completely distinct things. In his case, even with 57% quest clearance along with 3-time multipliers from the S grade event, it barely pushed him to S grade.

It was only by luck that he encountered the hidden event that shot up his grade to SS.

As he thought of the trial, he could say with surety that if that pup engaged in the war from the front, then it was an impossible event.

No player could kill it without help from NPCs. The more he thought about the trial, the more he realized that the difference between S and SS grades was not double but multiple times higher.

This also explained that with these shortcuts, the limit was S rank until a player did lots of stuff. Like the grinding chain quest in the first part of the trial, and then some other guy started the event and you stole the benefit. Or maybe start multiple events. 

All of this was his wishful thinking, but these were not impossible. There was always a chance; what if he survived that last collision? In that case, he could have a chance to fight the remaining monsters or even sell that pup's body for more bombs and then use those to hunt more.

Would that increase his grade? He shook his head. There was no point in thinking so much; it's just that this event opened his eyes to the fact that there could be many things that were not available on the internet. 

This explained to him the mysteries of Shakhan's traits. His eyes shone with excitement. He stopped searching on the phone and rushed to the gaming hall. There was a lot he needed to do today.