Abe the Wizard

Chapter 1005: Myth

Going from rank 22 to 23 was a huge breakthrough for any occupation holder. This was especially true for the druids. Being in rank 23 would make them the strongest of their league. Anything after that, say, at 24 or 25, was just something extremely rare. Anyone who was attempting that would just shut themselves off completely in pursuit of trying to become legendary druids.

Still, as slim as the chances seemed, many thought that it was worth the try. The opportunity of becoming top elites was just very tempting. It was no exception for Druid Beula. She spent the majority of her life trying to make a further push, and once her eyes opened again, it was like she was elevated with a new sense of hope.

“It’s so good to live.”

That’s the first thing she said: she went to smell the tree of life and the herbs under it. She was trying to feel the presence that she had long forgotten. After that, without saying anything, she walked beside Abel and gave a 90-degree bow. It was the most she could do to express her gratitude.

Abel smiled and returned a bow, “Congratulations, Druid Beula.”

Lorraine seemed quite surprised, “You’ve become younger, Druid Beula.”

That was very true. Druid Beula was clearly close to her natural death, but now, she looked like a human in her sixties. The contrast was enough to make everyone look twice, and as someone who’s been with her for so long, it was especially true for Loraine.

Druid Beula gave another bow to Loraine, “I have you think as well, your Majesty.”

Druid Lucia stood up very quickly. It was very hard for her not to hide away her enthusiasm. Something echoed inside her, made her eyes glitter with admiration when she saw how new Druid Beula looked.

But first, she expressed her gratitude, “Thank you so much for the help, Master bennett.”

“No need for being too polite,” Abel said, then turned to point at their surroundings, “Very well, now that the promotion is complete, we should leave this place. Actually, would you all mind if I take some herbs first?”

After they agreed, Frankenstein brought Abel, Lorraine and the two big druids walked out. Soon after that, the two big druids guarding the tree immediately walked inside the valley and went to the front of the tree.

A big druid placed twenty green top-level gemstones in front of the tree, “O great tree of life! I beg you, help me with my promotion at the expense of these gemstones!”

The other big druid watched with him and hoped for a reply. They’ve been guarding the tree this whole time, and they’ve watched as Master Bennett initiated the promotion three times. They even did a power of the Will scan of the whole process. They knew that green top-level gemstones were necessary for the procedure, but since they couldn’t find the perfectly pure ones Master Bennett had, they decided to make up for the lack of quality with more quantity, hence the twenty in total.

The tree of life, to their disappointment, didn’t make any reaction whatsoever. It was not interested in the twenty gemstones that were on the ground. The reason it traded with Abel was only because of their treaty of equality. The tree of life was a proud being. It was not going to pay attention to beings that it did not acknowledge.

“Ugh!” the big druid let out a long sigh, knowing that his assumption turned out to be correct. He just felt like trying, though. They’ve been here for years, and they thought that the most serious consequence they were going to get for trying was just a warning from the tree itself. That was true in a sense, but from the tree’s perspective, the quality of what he was offering was nothing more than a slightly rotten fruit. It had its uses, but it wasn’t really going to win any sense of liking.

The big druid turned to speak to the big druid beside him, “I guess we can only ask Master Bennett now.”

As high as their ranks might be, the two druids became very concerned immediately. They had nothing they had that could gain Master Bennett’s interest. There was nothing they could trade for his help. This time, especially. Master Bennett was very blatant in the way he displayed the total cost for promotion. It was already hard enough to mine even a hundred top-level gemstone pieces from a large-sized mine and forget about the pure ones he was showing them. They’ve never even seen them anywhere else before.

The two big druids looked at each other and spoke, “Should we just report this? We’ll have the palace and Master Bennett to talk about this.”

Having sent Loraine over, the first thing Abel did was to contact his three followers. He went on to tell them that he was going away for shutdown training, and in that period of time, he was not going to do anything on his own. By using shutdown training as an excuse, he was hoping that he could enter the dark world. He never really started on clearing out the great plateau outside of the demon-gathering fort, but he did make quite some use of his time creating potions and making further progress learning his spells.

So far, he’s never had to place any of his work in the Wizard Union’s trading system. Instead, he just passed through the large-sized teleportation circle and distributed the potion evenly to the Wizard Union, the lightning clan, and the elven palace. This meant that his follower could just apply the potions to the research spirit without asking him in person. That was just what spirits were for. It made things so much easier for the person when he didn’t have to regularly process all the chores himself.

Still, that didn’t really stop the elves from going to see him after he declared to have a shutdown. He didn’t see any one of them, but the rumors of what he did to help the two big druids just spread too quickly. To handle this situation, he shut down the steel fort in advance and hid at a place that only his close ones could find. As for now, he just had no more use to seeing anyone. He’s practiced all his spells already, and he needed to start doing clean-up at the great plateau outside of the fort. Before that, of course, he still had to do his modification work with the treant armor he just got.

Speaking of the treant armor, he thought about modifying it as soon as he first laid his eyes on it. All the equipment on the central continent was considered to be regular inside the dark world. That was true even for the legendary ones. The Horadric Cube identified this armor as white-quality equipment when he did an examination. The armor possessed the ability to heal wounds with stored life force energy, but that was almost useless for, say, the Beamon giant beast. His druid spirit could just supply a “full recovery potion” if it was severely hurt in any way, so this bonus effect just seemed redundant in any case.

From Abel’s perspective, the treant armor was probably something that the Moon Goddess made in her early years. It mustn’t be something she thought seriously of, though. The ingredients and the power they harnessed might seem impressive, but nothing seemed to be too difficult in the way that the piece was created. That being said, this was a good piece that deserved to be modified in some way.

Having thought through a rough pan, Abel placed the treant armor on the ground. He took a “Horadric Malus” from the blacksmith shop rack, and the hole-punching effect just happened to be available after resting for 31 days. He grabbed it with his hand, placed the crystal angel statue inside of his pineal gland, and slowly drew dark golden energy into the hammer. He began to gain a much further understanding of what he should do because of this. Right now, his craftsmanship had increased to the point that he could rely just on the dark golden energy to punch holes the way he wanted to. Because of that, simply raising the hammer itself was enough for him to make very precise strikes at the armor piece. By communicating with his power of the Will, he very quickly opened three holes on the treant armor. Following that, golden sparks began to shoot out when he dropped the hammer onto that giant piece.

It was worrying, to say the least. This was his very first time using the Horadric Malus like this. He suspected that his angelic statue did contain divine energy and used this divine energy to do its biddings. Still, he had no idea what the success rate would be when he was trying a method this unconventional. He didn’t know what strange things could happen because of what he was trying. Still, he followed his instincts, so he punched out three holes very quickly.

“So far, so good,” he spoke to himself. He felt confident as he just found the key to boosting Doff’s ability. He was ready to turn his armor set into rune signs, such that he could do more intricate combinations with them. As for the missing ones, he could just synthesize them with his Horadric Cube.

Rune myth

3% chance of casting a rank 1 howl when hit

10% chance of casting a rank 1 sap upon hitting an enemy

+2 barbarian skill level

+300 defense against long-range

+10 life generation speed

Attacker received hit to 14

Requirement -15%

Out of all these things, what Doff needed the most would have to be the +2 barbarian skill set. On the central continent, rank 20 spell was the max level, and if one wanted to enhance the prowess of spell skills, the only way of doing so was to make an indirect enhancement with something of higher level. With the rune of “inspection” and the help of the “meditation” light ring, this was not going to be something difficult. For the rune of myth, it could just improve his barbarian skill level.

If there was anything that he was especially satisfied with, it’d have to be the fact that he could increase the barbarian skills with only cheap runes. He just needed 15# Hel, 11# Amn, and 4# Nef. He would’ve gone mad if he had to look for ingredients to make just one extra advanced rune. He didn’t have another #21 Pul to take out, and making it by synthesizing an astronomical number of 10# Thul was just too much for him. If it was crafting a 15# Hel with 243 10# Thul, however, he could still find that number somewhat acceptable.

He sighed and started drawing the 10# Thul. For the remaining time, he continued to collect blue howling rabbit crystal cores from the oak tree, synthesize, and use enough crystal cores to achieve the dark golden quality. He drew and drew and finally got enough #10 Thul to use for the following few days. Eventually, he got the three runes he wanted, the 15# Hel, the 11# Amn and the 4# Nef.