Having given up on putting together the grievances or perhaps what could be an enormous conspiracy that took place seven hundred years, Xi Wei began to absorb the divinity fragment as hard as he could.
Though Amazon the Rainforest Guardian was an ancient god whose divinity was much stronger than the Aquatic Lord’s, Xi Wei had merely obtained a fragment of said divinity. As such, absorbing it wasn’t difficult, and since the deity had already fallen for over seven hundred years, the original deity’s mark in the divinity had mostly vanished.
Indeed, it had gone smoothly.
At the same time, Xi Wei had quickly developed a new version patch after working without rest.
[Ding!]
[Gaming System Update V3.0 Complete!]
[Life Skills added for Players to learn and train]
[Life Skills affects certain game effects: for example, when Players kill a target with ‘Butcher’, the corpse would not disappear but be dismembered into graded ingredients without special effects (At the same time, the Player wouldn’t gain the EXP of the target). Players who have learned the Life Skills for cooking can prepare those ingredients with a chance of developing food that grants buffs.]
[Life Skills can be learnt with skill points but can’t be leveled up aside from repetitive application and developing Life Skill proficiency.]
[EXP can be gained by using Life Skills, with increased EXP at higher Life Skill levels. Without monsters to fight, developing one’s Life Skills is a good choice.]
[Apprentice System implemented: Players could go to any System Shop to learn Life Skills as apprentices (Please prepare sufficient game coins beforehand).]
The Life Skills System was one that Xi Wei had planned for a long time and could be used for consuming the Players’ skill points that increased by the day, but was also another measure for them to gain EXP aside from battle.
Still, it would be natural for most Players to find fighting monsters and farming dungeons were more convenient for earning EXP than life skills. But although Xi Wei wouldn’t have any good solutions to change that, having the Players being a little eager to fight was not a bad thing in the early days of the Church of Games.
In the end, the fighting ability of a church’s followers is an important measure of its strength aside from the standard of the god himself. That was why the existence of Players was a clever measure to fight against enemies, since they were true believers from a certain point of view, and they could fight on behalf of their church without self-regard just like the zealots of other churches.
***
Apart from the introduction of Life Skills, another new class was added in the system update.
[New Warrior class-change added: Junglewalker]
[Class Description: Having the ‘Emerald Heart’ trait to easily bond with plants and animals, Junglewalkers could connect spiritually to the forest environments around them to gain its blessing and aid in battle. Moreover, the trait of Emerald Heart would allow Junglewalkers to extend their senses along with nature, broadening the range of their visions and hearing and improve bow skills.]
[Click to view footage]
[Class change requirements: Level 15 Ranger, accomplishing Class Change quests.]
Like the other classes that Xi Wei had made before, Junglewalker was created after absorbing an authority—in this case, a divinity fragment of Amazon. As usual, its skill tree also had three skill branches.
The first skill branch is Treeherders, who illuminates their Emerald Hearts and transmute mana to lifeforce (Not HP, but to turn the blue bar into green that-sort-of-feeling). Then, by consuming lifeforce, they would nurture normal seeds to grow rapidly, and do battle by manipulating those plants or even nurture treants out of them.
A special aspect about Treeherders was their ability to grow plant familiars to help fight beforehand when they have enough lifeforce. However, the Players who focused entirely on this path could have those familiars destroyed by their enemies and it would take time to create them again, not to mention that they would need to spare some space for seeds to keep in their bags in case of emergencies.
The second skill branch is Beastmorphs. By illuminating their Emerald Hearts to condense their mana into lifeforce crystals that they keep within their own bodies, they would consume those crystals and fight by altering their bodies into various beasts or even magical creatures. From a certain perspective, Beastmorphs resembled the Druids of online fantasy games back on earth: they change form for a limited period while also having to use up lifeforce crystals. In turn, condensing lifeforce crystals needed time as well—while the number of lifeforce crystals they could store in their body increases as the Beastmorph’s level increases, things could be tight with the limited number of crystals that could be stored early on.
From there, one could see that the Emerald Heart trait was basically a very heavily watered-down version of divinity. Like how divinity could transmute divine energy into divine power, the Emerald Heart allows Players to transmute mana into lifeforce, and the skill branch where they would choose to either transmute it into a green bar or crystals—or maybe half-and-half was up to the Players own choosing.
The last skill branch, however, completely ignores the transmutation ability of the Emerald Heart. Grand Hunters rely solely on the improvement of physicality to improve bow skills up to new heights, using their affinity with the jungle to set traps and obtain supernatural ability with the body of mortals.
Grand Hunters were basically a strengthened version of normal hunters, but this path was long and had much obstacles in store, just as their skills were demanding on one’s technique. It was no different from the Kengyoku skill branch of Swordmasters because it basically provides a chance for the Players to improve up to Extraordinary. Besides, unlike the other class branches that were conveniently Extraordinary with sufficiently high levels, it would prove hard to continue on this path without determination and a little talent.
***
Aside from those two changes, the new update actually did not change much else. The Player level limit remained at 60 since the volume of Amazon’s divinity fragment was not huge and could hardly support Xi Wei completing Life Skills and developing the Junglewalker class. Since he was also keeping some divine power as reserves in case of emergency, to achieve all that was already pushing the fragment to its limit.
“Oh, right. Almost forgot something there…”
Xi Wei slapped his forehead with his tentacles.
[Reputation system for Lancaster Mayor now open]
[Players’ default reputation is ‘Indifference’]
