Summoning the Holy Sword

There was a reason for Rhode’s hesitation because from the start, he had no intention of building the Hell Lord Talent.

Compared to the Summoning Master Talent and Soul Messenger Talent, the Hell Lord Talent was a much more mediocre talent focusing on self-sufficiency and comprehensive development. But, as the saying goes, there’s nothing perfect in this world. The Hell Lord Talent’s comprehensive development was configured in a way that the damage output wouldn’t be as powerful as the Soul Messenger Talent and it wouldn’t be as efficient as the Summoning Master Talent in terms of providing assistance. There was once a player who had filled all the skill points in the three Talent Trees as an experiment. In the end, he concluded that the output from the Soul Messenger Talent and Summoning Master Talent was stronger than the Hell Lord Talent. Furthermore, all the damage output of the Hell Lord Talent was in team battles; in dungeon battles or PK, it wasn’t impressive at all. The only merit was during individual missions where its endurance abilities would bring a certain advantage.

To be frank, this advantage wasn’t attractive to Rhode, nor most other players. However, there were some lone rangers who were used to playing games alone and treated MMORPG games as single-player games. Furthermore, they often explored the gaming world alone and were unwilling to bicker with others over the distribution of spoils. This was why the Hell Lord Talent was considered cost-effective for them as they loved to go on adventures alone and lacked support in many aspects. With certain probabilities, the Hell Lord Talent could provide them with Soul Cores and save them a lot of time and money from spending on auction purchases.

Compared to the other two Talent Trees, the Hell Lord Talent allowed the holder to summon the most spirits by using its talent ‘Spirit Disaster’. This talent allowed the holder to manipulate corpses within a certain range into using own summoning spirits to engage in battles. Furthermore, this would only consume a low amount of spiritual energy and usually, this skill would be enough to turn the tide in battle.

However, the biggest drawback of this talent was that the holder could summon spirits of the undead attribute only. This also signified that when the holder with this talent met a Fire Elemental Mage, Holy Knight, or Cleric, he could only prepare to lose…

It definitely wasn’t Rhode’s style to hang himself on the tree, which was why he had no intention of building the Hell Lord Talent.

But Rhode had to reconsider everything. The Hell Lord Talent’s only advantage was its endurance and right now, wasn’t that what he needed the most?

Will it be worth it to waste precious skill points on this talent just for the sake of this endurance ability alone? Rhode couldn’t decide. In terms of endurance, it wasn’t that the Summoning Master Talent and Soul Messenger Talent had none. The Soul Messenger Talent had another Talent, [Legion Soul], to work in collaboration with [Legion Horn]. Rhode just needed to fulfill a condition and he could cast [Legion Horn] without exhausting any spiritual energy. As for the Summoning Master Talent, there was a Talent, [Intense Meditation], where Spirit Swordsmen could increase the rate of spiritual energy recovery during battle.

However, this was where the problem was. These two talents were located in the later and deeper stages of the Talent Trees. Even though Rhode received two skill points every time he leveled up, he needed to be at least level 40 to 50 before he could activate these talents. On the other hand, the [Soul Territory] could be filled to its maximum as it was located on the First Stage on the Hell Lord Talent.

However, it wouldn’t be that simple as Rhode had pre-planned the build for his two Talent Trees and most importantly, he didn’t know if he would be able to reset his skill points in this world. This was why he had been cautious in distributing skill points. After all, Talent Trees must be interrelated, where active skills could stimulate passive skills and passive skills could influence active skills, increasing probabilities, and damage. All these affected how one handled these skills effectively and required paying particular attention to. Itd wasn’t as simple as just increasing the skill points of whichever talent that seemed great. The entire Talent Tree was like stacking blocks where the entire block would collapse if one drew three blocks from the bottom.

If Rhode moved these three skill points to the Hell Lord Talent, that would mean that he had to give up part of the other Talent Trees. To Rhode, this was a question of whether it was worth it or not. Was it necessary for him to make such huge changes for the sake of endurance in an extra Talent?

Rhode had two choices: to modify his existing plans and add the three skill points to the Hell Lord Talent or to continue focusing on developing one Talent Tree and achieve the specific talent that he wanted in the shortest time.

In the end, Rhode made a decision.

As his levels increased, it was getting incrementally harder for him to increase his levels as the EXP requirements were much higher. The EXP that he received from killing Vulture and the Necromancer had increased his level by two and even if he managed to complete the two upcoming 5 Star Missions, the EXP might not be enough to successfully raise him to level 40. His endurance ability was a problem which he needed a solution the most. Furthermore, Rhode needed to conserve his spiritual energy for the next 5 Star Mission. Considering the importance of priority, Rhode made a self-evident decision.

“Talent, activate.” The Talent Tree system emerged before him as he commanded. The Soul Messenger and Summoning Master Talent were abnormally glaring while the Hell Lord Talent was dimmed fully. Rhode reached out for the Talent Tree before him and slid across.

A line of system prompt emerged.

[Consuming 3 skill points on selected Talent Tree — Hell Lord unlocked]

[Hell Lord First Stage Talent Unlock: Soul Territory. Bone Signal. Death Incantation]

[Received Halo Technique: Soul Territory LV3 (The holder can absorb the spiritual energies of the creatures that the holder has killed by 30%) Quantity stackable]

[Halo Technique Awakened]

Rhode let out a sigh of relief and stored the remaining skill points. At this moment, he required only the Soul Territory while the other two new talents weren’t that attractive to Rhode and he had no intentions on activating them. A line of system prompt suddenly appeared before his eyes.

[Talent Tree Fully Activated. Executing Fusion Command]

“Eh?” Rhode puckered his brows as he had never heard of the ‘Talent Tree Fully Activated’ and ‘Fusion Command’. However, as Rhode was doubting, the bleak Hell Lord Talent Tree suddenly shone in rays of glaring, golden radiance while the other two Talent Trees began to glow correspondingly. The dazzling rays of light forced his eyes shut.

After a few seconds, Rhode re-opened his eyes to examine the Talent Tree again. And what presented itself baffled him.

At this moment, the Talent Tree system had totally transformed into something unlike before.

The three Talent Trees system used to be separate. But now, they seemed to be the roots of a tree. The path of the three Talent Trees intertwined densely. Although there weren’t many changes in general, some of the talents belonging to the Summoning Master Talent had become under the Soul Messenger Talent while the Hell Lord Talent had a few techniques belonging to the Soul Messenger…

What is this all about?

Rhode’s mind went blank and he realized that his past plannings were most likely useless now. Rhode couldn’t understand why his Talent Tree system would have such a change.

He flipped through the past records of the System Prompt and read the line of [Talent Tree Fully Activated. Executing Fusion Command]

Is this a preinstalled function of the Talent Tree?

In the game, the Talent Tree didn’t have such a function even when some players had activated all three Talent Trees. But why did this happen to me?

It was Rhode’s strong point to give up thinking about an unresolvable problem. He threw all the doubts to the back of his mind and began to examine the Talent Tree carefully. Rhode was fortunate that all the talents that he possessed belonged to the first three stages only and their differences were still fairly obvious, so there weren’t many changes to the talents which he already had. However, in the later stages, the talents were more tangled. There were some talents that fused into totally different kinds that he wasn’t aware of and Rhode hopelessly realized that all the hard work that he had put in for the build of the Talent Tree might need to be abolished…

However, apart from this, Rhode found something unexpected.

There used to be the representative names below each Talent Trees respectively. In other words, there would be [Summoning Master], [Soul Messenger], and [Hell Lord] at the lowest end. After the Talent Trees fused, there weren’t any changes to their positions. However, Rhode noticed that the lines extending below their names were entangled.

But there was no information stated in them. Rhode tapped on the interface but there was no reaction, as though it was a texture bug.

What exactly is this?