Thousand-Year Wine? Jack remembered Peniel mentioning this potion. It was equivalent to the Ancient Blood Awakening Potion except it was used on the human race. While the Ancient Blood Awakening Potion drew out the hidden strength of a native vampire and gave them a burst of strength for a short duration, this Thousand Year Wine boosted a native human growth rate for a long duration.
Their functions on players were the same though, adding fifteen days to age.
Jack thought for a bit. Since there was only him here and he was the one that killed the boss, he thought no one would complain if he took all the best loots, would they? He would just compensate by giving all the coins, cores, equipment, and materials dropped by this boss to Jeanny. So, he proceeded to open the lid of Thousand-Year Wine and emptied its content into his throat.
“It was unexpectedly delicious,” Jack uttered.
“It isn’t called wine for nothing,” Peniel said.
It was three days yet before his age reached age 7 months. Due to this Thousand Year Wine, he received notification that he had reached that month once he finished drinking. His race skill, Limitless Potential, was upgraded to rank 5. This skill now granted 1000 HP, 150 to Stamina and MP, and +5 to all attributes except luck.
He checked his status window, his next rise in age would be eighteen days later.
‘Cool,’ he thought. If he could get another of that Thousand-Year Wine, he would be one month ahead of the general population.
Jack then checked the Heart of Ice. It was described as crafting material, but he remembered another item with a similar name and description.
“I figure I should be able to use this on my Amulet of Summoning, shouldn’t I?” Jack asked Peniel.
“You are correct,” Peniel confirmed.
“Awesome! That rock golem had been rather lacking as a summon. About time, that I get a better one,” Jack uttered. Considering this thing dropped from the Ice Demon Fiend, did it mean that the rare elite demon would be the monster that was summoned when he used his amulet?
He was excited to find out. He immediately interfaced his amulet with this ice rock. The ice rock merged with the amulet smoothly.
“Hm? I don’t get my Heart of Rock back?” Jack asked when the merging was completed.
“No. This is different from imprinting. If you make a change, whatever previous item you merged with this amulet is lost,” Peniel said.
Jack didn’t think it a waste, he had no use for the Heart of Rock anyway.
When he wanted to test the summon, he was surprised to find out the summoning cost.
“O–One hundred mana cores..?” He uttered. The cost was ten times when he summoned Rock Golem.
“What do you expect? The Ice Demon Fiend is a rare elite monster. Do you honestly think the summoning cost will be the same?” Peniel said.
Jack canceled his attempt. With his current stock of mana cores, he could only do the summon four times. He won’t waste it just to have a look at his new summon.
Seeing that there was nothing further to do here, he exited this ice world.
Outside, the others had been waiting. They had heard the successful notification and received the exp points. All of them had lost one level due to death, but some went up back to their previous level due to the exp granted.
“Expert! Color me impressed. I thought for sure the raid was a fail already when I, as the main character, left the dungeon,” Jack heard John’s words when he came out.
He completely ignored the guy’s narcissistic comment and went to Jeanny. “Here are the rewards,” Jack said as he gave Jeanny the loots from the Ice Demon Fiend. “I took some of them. I hope you don’t mind.”
“The guild already received rewards from clearing the dungeon. Considering you are the one who killed the boss, I’m sure nobody will object if you take all the loots,” Jeanny said.
The others nodded.
“It was teamwork,” Jack said. “I wouldn’t have won if it was me alone.” But then he thought, if it had been him alone, he would have been able to summon Arlcard and the dungeon would have been completed as well. But he kept that thought to himself.
“Well, I guess this taught us one thing. We are still not strong enough to raid this medium difficulty,” Jeanny said. “We will have to just continue raiding the easy version for the time being.”
“I beg to differ. As long as we enter with only nine members, we should be able to clear the dungeon regularly,” Jack said.
“Oh? You surprise me again, expert. I thought you are going to tell us that you have some other thing to do and will leave us again first thing tomorrow?” John said.
“I need to join the selection tournament five days from now. I won’t be able to do much with such few days, might as well spend my time here raiding this dungeon and using the training cave,” Jack said.
The training cave in Heavenly Citadel had been built to accommodate levels 40 till 50. So it was a suitable place for leveling up. Jack only needed to pay contribution points to use it. He had lots of contribution points so that was not a problem. The drawback of the training cave was the monsters inside dropped no loots, coins, or mana cores.
Another reason why Jack was willing to stay and farm the medium difficulty legacy dungeon, was due to the two items he had gotten just now, Exp Pill and Thousand-Year Wine.
Jack told the others that he would like priority on these two items if they dropped. He let go of all other loots in exchange. The others responded that if the medium difficulty was successfully raided, it was all due to him, so he had the right to ask for priority.
*
In the remaining days, that was how Jack spend his schedule. The medium difficulty had a one-day cooldown, so Jack could only enter once a day.
As planned, they entered with only nine members, leaving one for Arlcard. On the first run with nine members, Jack summoned Arlcard once they entered. One thing that Jack noticed, when Jack last summoned him, Arlcard’s level 49 exp bar was only around 10%. Now it was around 30%. It was getting more difficult to level up after reaching such a high level, so Jack could see that his vampire companion was not less passionate than him in getting stronger. Why such passion though, the vampire didn’t seem to have the interest to share.
Everything went as expected, not only did Arlcard make short work of the Ice Ray Birds and Ice Dogs, but he also didn’t appear to have any difficulty soloing the boss despite the boss having the same grade and even one level higher. This vampire companion was exceptional even amongst same grade opponent. Peniel mentioned that Arlcard could probably be considered half-mythical grade already. Jack asked the other eight members to stay back while he and Therras helped Arlcard to speed up the process.
After the Ice Demon Fiend was slain, Arlcard said to Jack, “next time, call me only when you reach the boss. Don’t call me for small fries. I don’t have all the time in the world.”
The vampire left afterward. Jack was morose. Perhaps he was the only player that ever got scolded by their own companion.
So on their next run, Jack and the others fought the small fries by themselves and only called Arlcard after they arrived at the boss.
With Arlcard, running the medium-difficulty Ice Throne Legacy Dungeon became low-risk. Thus, Jeanny allowed other weaker core members to enter as well. Just to get the experience for future reference. All they needed to do was get to the boss as quickly as they could, to allow sufficient time before the frozen status hit the one with the lowest ice resistance. The rest they left to Jack and Arlcard.
Not every run rewarded Jack with the items he wanted, but he still got some after the next five runs. He got four rare-grade exp pills, thirteen uncommon-grade exp pills, and two bottles of Thousand-Year Wine. There was no doubt, of course, this drop rate was due to Jack’s very high Luck stat added by the boost of Runestone of Luck. Peniel said if it was any other person, perhaps they won’t see one bottle of Thousand-Year Wine even after more than ten runs.
Jack gave one of each to Jeanny so she could duplicate it, but the mana cores needed were a lot. Especially the Thousand-Year Wine, which needed one thousand mana cores.
For the one bottle he kept, he drank it. On that day which was the day before the challenge tournament, he only needed fourteen days to reach age 8 months. This second bottle immediately raised him to 8 months old. He was now officially one month ahead of the others.
At the age of 8 months, his Limitless Potential became rank 6, granting him HP +1200, Stamina and MP +180, all attributes +6 except for luck.
From the exp pills he kept, he used three rare-grades for his Blade Dancer, while the uncommon-grade pills went to his Beastmaster class. With the boss and dungeon’s generous exp rewards combined with Jack’s non-stop grinding using the training caves.. On the day of the Selection Tournament, Jack had managed to level up his Blade Dancer class again to level 43, while his Beastmaster went up two levels to level 40.
