Blair

Azrie Part: 1/2

The notification was there, and I found that my heart was beating faster and faster. Perhaps it was an odd sense of excitement, or it was the fact that I had just gotten a Feat that made Glim tremble⁠— every factor combined just made me feel a slight sense of anticipation.

[Receive Unknown Reward?]

In the end, I agreed. And in front of me a bright flash appeared⁠—an item materialized before me, and I quickly identified it to be– a bow? It was similar to the one I was using, triple string, weird pulleys, made out of metal, but it was also a deep forest green and its entire frame had nothing but leaves seemingly glued onto it.

[You have received ⁠— Verex Replica (Rare) ⁠— A replica of the legendary Verex bow. Manufactured by an unknown but talented smith, it has managed to replicate one of the many abilities of Verex. Once a day you can fire an arrow imbued with the power of Immediate Fate. Immediate Fate: Anything affected by it will reach its final original fate, any object affected by outside forces will remain to be affected till its end.]

My mind paused as it floated onto my arms. What did Immediate Fate even mean? I still felt pretty much close to empty on mana, and even though I was going to wait a bit before consuming a mana potion, I still took one out. Though I quickly noticed I had about three left. Drinking it immediately made me feel better, at least enough to try using the bow without mana. My muscles still ached, and when I tried to stand up I realized that I was still injured from the ant charge. I quickly drank a second potion, this time to regenerate. However, I placed the bow next to me and moved on to other things, the ability probably required mana that I couldn’t spare now.

Out of curiosity, I grabbed my other bow and took a look at it.

[Initiator Bow (Common) ⁠— A compound bow given to all initiators.]

Huh. Well, at least if description and rarity was anything to go by I had gotten a massive upgrade, though visually speaking nothing much changed other than that one seemed to be partially made out of bush. I shook my head and moved on to the other notifications. Next was picking a skill, though the notification was slightly different.

[New Milestone reached ⁠— Skills & Knowledge Available]

◇ ◇ ◇

There was one thing particularly weird about the new skill list, and that was the notification that appeared when I first opened the recommended list.

[You have reached level 25 ⁠— Based on battle records you are eligible to acquire Prophecy Knowledge instead of Skills should you so choose.]

And after sorting through a hundred or so of new entries, I finally had a distinctively different selection of skills and things, though two of the old ones were still there.

[Skill ⁠— Flash Reload (Rare) ⁠— Pulsing mana through your fingers instantly reloads the weapon you’re holding. Cannot surpass natural fire rate of the weapon.]

[Skill ⁠— Disintegration Fang (Rare) ⁠— Highly corrosive enhancement, only applies to compatible weapons. Cannot damage the bearer. +8 to Strength.]

[Knowledge ⁠— Dark Treants (Dark Plants) ⁠— Entries on Dark Treants from Journals of exploration of the Dark Division.]

[Knowledge ⁠— Fullbloom Tendrils (Dark Plants) ⁠— Entries on Fullbloom Tendrils from Journals of exploration of the Dark Division.]

[Knowledge ⁠— Maneater (Dark Plants) ⁠— Entries on Maneaters from Journals of experimentation from the Eternal Legion.]

The list of knowledge went on and on, but in the end those were the ones that seemed to have the most interesting names to me. To be honest, I didn’t see exactly how they would help me, but I was almost tempted to pick them outright if they were to teach me a new kind of plant. That said, there were three other skills that I found to be interesting.

[Skill ⁠— Comet Arrows (Rare) ⁠— Double the speed of fired arrows.]

[Skill ⁠— Flashbang (Rare) ⁠— Overwhelm an object to destabilize it and create a bright light to stun your targets. Limited by sight.]

[Skill ⁠— Covert Lethality (Rare Passive) ⁠— If the enemy is unaware if your presence, gain 50% bonus damage for the next three seconds after initiating an attack.]

Ultimately, I felt like all the options were good if not great. Though I was skeptical on whether Flashbang would blind me as well, and stun me, but other than that everything was interesting. Even the Knowledge seemed appealing ⁠— assuming I could actually use it to create new types of plants ⁠— so all things considered, the options were good.

I pondered for a bit.

[Skill ⁠— Disintegration Fang (Rare)] and [Skill ⁠— Flash Reload (Rare)] were appealing, they always were really. In spite of the fact that I most likely was going to be only able to use the spear with the first choice, it sounded powerful. And the attribute bonus was still no joke. The latter was practical, but perhaps irrelevant.

Then there was the knowledge, it was appealing⁠—

[Er, Blair,] Glim called my attention. [There is a saying that if Knowledge is what you seek you can find it through Guidance. Perhaps looking at the stars might help…]

Glim’s odd wording reminded me of its hints. “The Guidance of the Stars provides knowledge?”

It bobbed. [I never said that!]

A frown formed as I removed Knowledge from my options. In the end I still seemed to trust Glim. Ha. I didn’t want to admit it but Glim had helped more often than not, even if it was a shitty assistant.

[Hey, I am not shitty!]

With all that in mind I moved onto the three new skills. [Skill ⁠— Comet Arrows (Rare)] Sounded great on paper, but I had one issue with it. It said arrows rather than shot, so perhaps it was some type of enhancement that I couldn’t overlay⁠—something that required the mana combination skill. I didn’t want to exactly waste a skill opportunity on something like that. I didn’t need faster arrows, it was just a bonus.

[Skill ⁠— Flashbang (Rare)] seemed useful as a runaway tool, though I was unsure of it. [Skill ⁠— Covert Lethality (Rare)] seemed amazing, but thinking about it, I was truly unsure if I needed that extra damage now that I had a Prophecy. Simply put, my options could be divided between lethal and utility.

[Skill ⁠— Disintegration Fang (Rare)], [Skill ⁠— Covert Lethality (Rare)] and [Skill ⁠— Comet Arrows (Rare)] landed on lethality. While [Skill ⁠— Flashbang (Rare)] and [Skill ⁠— Flash Reload (Rare)] landed on utility. In this case I felt like I needed a utility type skill. Of course, I had skipped over multiple mobility and utility skills when I made the initial list, but these were the best among my options. Now that i thought about it, the skills had clearly skewed towards a certain trend, no new skills of certain things appeared such as combat techniques or the like.

So in the end it seemed to be between [Skill ⁠— Flash Reload (Rare)] and [Skill ⁠— Flashbang (Rare)]. One was for emergencies for the most part while the other was something that I would use constantly, though the question about whether the arrows needed to be accessible had to be begged. A problem with that was⁠—Glim couldn’t feed me a potion because it was within the ring, did that also mean Flash Reload would be unable to load from within my ring? If that was the case then it was certainly worse.

I was reluctant, and perhaps prideful, I didn't want to take an emergency skill, but I suppose I needed it.

[Skill Learned ⁠— Flashbang (Rare) ⁠— Overwhelm an object to destabilize it and create a bright light to stun your targets. Limited by sight.]

Azrie

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