Is this really a Game?!

Reign and the others retreated to their building as the action-packed day came to an end. Reign was currently looking at the ceiling whilst thinking of something as he had his status open.

Attribute points: 28 𝘦𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝑙.

‘I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that 100 is going to be another threshold.’ Reign tells himself as he looks at his stats, with the free attribute points that he had, he could afford to elevate his Strength, Agility, or Spirit to 100.

‘Eldar said that breaking through a threshold will only guarantee that you will gain a skill from the first attribute, the others all need luck in order to get, I managed to gain 3 skills from 3 attributes, which is considered to be quite lucky as most people only get 1.’ Reign continues thinking while looking at the status carefully.

‘Wolf managed to get 2, Shadow and Tank as well. Laura only got 1 from her spirit, but her demonic power makes up for it as she got a couple of passive abilities right at the beginning. Beast of course got 4 skills, lucky as always.’

Reign smiles as he thinks back to when they all talked about the stats, when he finally broke through the other thresholds he was surprised to see that nothing happened as no skills were gained, it was only later that they talked with Eldar and he explained why.

Now he was faced with a choice, if he does use his attribute points, what should he elevate to 100 first? He had a good chance that all 3 will once again give him a skill since they did so once, but if they don’t then he should think about which one to use first. He mostly used his speed and lightning during a battle, so elevating strength was a definite no, both his agility and spirit are more important.

Now the question was which of the two should he use?

Agility will definitely give him either a passive or active skill that will increase his speed, depending on the skill, his speed could potentially be elevated to a new level.

Spirit on the other hand was equally important to him, his ability was a powerful Rank S, but there was a drawback to such power and that was the immense mana consumption, compared to Wolf and the others he actually uses his skills a bit less frequently and only channels mana and lightning to boost his speed as that is enough most of the times.

The reason was that if he truly spammed his skills all the time then his mana would run out quite fast. Passing the threshold for spirit gave him the mana organ which was an incredible passive to have, even now its importance had not lowered, in fact, it might have even been elevated. The reason he was able to use his ability as he does now was exactly because of the mana organ, without it he might not be able to use half as often as he did now.

Of course, everyone from the team had a mana organ as well, the difference was that he gained it earlier and as such, it was stronger and could hold more mana and replenish it faster.

[ Mana organ ] (early phase)

Wolf and the others were still stuck at the beginning phase, of course, that still allowed for their mana to be doubled, but it was still not as much as Reign whose mana organ quadrupled his total mana. Each phase was actually a big change and would increase the mana organ’s power to a different level.

If elevating Spirit meant that he will gain another such passive then everything would be great, even gaining a skill that would allow him to use mana more effectively would be good as well. But if he was to gain an offensive or defensive skill then that would be bad as he had no need for them. He already had a bunch of offensive skills while defensive ones simply didn’t suit him as he simply overwhelmed his enemies with his speed and power whilst dodging or parrying attacks most of the time.

Having a defensive skill would either be useless or would force him to change his fighting style which was not something Reign wanted to do.

Reign was stuck in a dilemma, which of the two should he choose, tomorrow they were planning on spending the day training as the following day is when the challenge will start. Reign goes to sleep, he had a whole day in front of him, maybe it’s for the best to rest a bit before deciding which stat to increase first.

The next day Reign spent mostly training with Jack, learning the Second Sword was harder compared to what Reign believed it to be previously. The First Sword took Reign about a week to learn which was actually an incredible feat. The Second Sword would probably take at least the same amount of time.

Luckily for them, there were no ants that had shown up last night or during the day, some players and soldiers were patrolling the area and the cave and so far there was no activity. Reign knew that sooner or later he and the others would need to go down the tunnel they had closed, if the ants attacked them with their full numbers then even Reign wasn’t sure if they could survive.

All of the ants seemed to have come from the same colony, as such they definitely had a queen that was laying more eggs every single day. If they simply let the ants continue growing then in the end it would be too late as they would be surrounded by thousands of ants that would relentlessly attack them. Going to the colony and killing the queen was a must, of course, that wouldn’t be possible now as the ants there were definitely stronger.

Just the Antoid that was born yesterday was level 40 while the other ants were anywhere from level 25 to level 35, there are bound to be even stronger ones inside, and quite frankly, Reign wasn’t sure if they were strong enough to face such monsters right now. Especially since level 50 was supposed to be another threshold for both monsters and players, if the ants had any monster that was above that level then they would certainly die as the difference between a someone that was level 49 and level 50 was even larger compared to level 9 and level 10.

Reign and the others managed to win against the level 10 boss a long time ago whilst still being level 9 and they were certain that they would be able to stand their ground against a level 50, but what if there were more of them, then their chances of surviving to go down by quite a lot.

Level 10 was the first threshold, level 20 was a semi-threshold that would allow for players to change their class if they wished or to strengthen their current one, level 50 was the next one and it was supposed to be a simple one, there were no trials, but a series of challenges that players had to complete, what kind of challenges one might ask?

They are different from player to player so nobody knows what they could get. Since Reign and the others were quite a lot stronger compared to the average player they could be certain that they were going to get some difficult challenges, however.

It was a matter to be thought of and discussed later however as tomorrow was the day the game challenge begins. As Reign came back from his training with Jack he trained a bit with the others before everyone retreated back to their rooms.

As he stared at the ceiling Reign suddenly opened the status menu and finally decided to use his attribute points.

Spirit: 48 (72) (+8 from ability, +16 from item) – Spirit: 76 (100) (+8 from ability, +16 from item)

Suddenly Reign’s eyes opened wide as he could feel the mana around him much more clearly. It wasn’t like before when he could just sense the mana, now he could even see it, touch it, manipulate it directly.

Ding!

[ Passive evolved ]

[ Mana organ has evolved from early to mid-phase ]

Thump

Thump

Reign could feel his mana organ working as it took in the mana from the surroundings and pumped his body full of it whilst storing most. The feeling was incredible as not only had Reign suddenly gained a huge influx of mana, but he could now even see it.

It was confusing, seeing mana move through the air, but Reign was certain that after he got used to it then, his powers will experience another leap. After all, being able to manipulate the mana in your surroundings is something Reign had not seen being done yet, usually, both players and monsters will take the mana in their body before using it. They can use it as pure mana to strengthen themselves or they can use their abilities and skills.

But manipulating mana was different, this meant that Reign could potentially force mana to move closer to him during a fight which would improve his regeneration of mana whilst slowing his opponents. He could potentially even create lightning right above the enemy and attack them that way. With a wide smile on his face Reign goes to sleep, the challenge started tomorrow and he wanted to be at his best.