MMORPG: The Elementalist

It was the first time for Qin Rue to cast it, but he had quickly grabbed onto the advantages and weaknesses of Snow Eagle Dive.

The casting time of the skill was too long. The progress was also much more complicated and tedious than casting other spells. Other than the ordinary casting of Elementalism and the process to change matter into water or ice, there was also an extra step with many miscellaneous actions—the transfiguration step. This had caused him to get distracted for a bit during the process in order to understand the charm of transfiguration. Lastly, that spell would not lock on to the target the moment it was cast. Instead, players would need to control and design the projectile route of the attack before they could hit their targets.

No wonder it was very rare to see players use this spell during battles. With merely those few weaknesses, many players who loved to lock on their targets and launch their attacks directly upon their targets would give up on Snow Eagle Dive… Even though the power of the skill was extremely good, and its attack power could even be 5 Magic Attack higher than Darkfrost Sting, it was very inefficient!

Qin Ruo was not really fond of this spell. But when he walked over to the front of the Yellow Wild Boars" corpses and took note of the six b.l.o.o.d.y holes that were punctured into the necks of the wild boars by the snow eagle, he unconsciously furrowed his brows a little…

After getting back to the three ladies, he deactivated his Frostbarrier and recovered the amount of MP he used. Xiaoxiao, on the other hand, had once again found the area where the Black Wild Boars were, and she had already started slaughtering the monsters at a rhythmic pace.

Qin Ruo had remained on the same spot though. The same spot where he cast his Magic. He repeatedly used Tier 1 Water Elementalism.

“Water!”

“Condense!”

“Transfigure!”

Along with the appearance of the three gradual steps, a strange-looking water figure of a bird emerged right in front of the eyes of Gold Digger Babe and Little Kitten… After that, he excitedly cried out, “Ice!”

A ma.s.s number of ice b.a.l.l.s that looked like dumplings, formed its shape in midair. It refracted light rays as it ended up falling to countless pieces on the ground, clear and melodious.

“Pff!”

Gold Digger Babe and Little Kitten were not able to close their mouths with their hands in time as they could not refrain from laughing. They then saw the few dark lines that appeared on Qin Ruo"s forehead as he seemed a bit disheartened.

“Cough! Cough!”

Qin Ruo"s face turned a little red. He coughed a few times as he felt a little embarra.s.sed at the moment. After that, he continued to reimagine the situation a while ago.

All magic would need to be developed from Tier 1 Elementalism. He was unconvinced that he would not be able to make a complete version of Snow Eagle Dive with the Elementalism skill called Transfigure.

However, after failing tens of times in this experiment, rigid ice sculptures with all sorts of strange shapes appeared into the vicinity, causing Qin Ruo"s face to turn as red as a tomato. While the three ladies were looking at him with peculiar looks in their eyes, his face continued to turn dark red. By the end of it, he only declared that he had completely failed in mastering Transfigure. The reason was funny, though. Although he attempted to Transfigure that snow eagle as swiftly as he could, when he was using Trans.m.u.te 1 , every single ice sculpture that came into existence were just aesthetically pleasing to the eye. None of them was the swift Magic Attack “Snow Eagle Dive”.

The most distinctive thing about it was that one seemed to be alive, while the other did not seem to possess any signs of life!

Qin Ruo"s Cla.s.s could control a snow eagle in some sense. But he was unable to infuse a soul into the snow eagle, just like the Frostrampart that he cast. He was not able to make the Frostrampart talk…

Once he understood that, Qin Ruo finally gave up. The advanced Tier 4 spell that had been well designed by previous players seemed to be much more difficult to split up and recombine again than Tier 3 spells. Or perhaps there was some sort of part that he himself had yet to notice and master. All in all, he had failed this time!

After failing in a.n.a.lyzing Snow Eagle Dive, Qin Ruo had also temporarily given up on that spell. A spell that required too much time for him to cast was truly like a perilous double-edged sword. It would not be suitable for him to use it anyway. So, he had moved his eye over to the Darkfrost Sting that had slightly lower damage.

The Darkfrost Sting was actually a two-meter-long greatsword without a handle. Its surface area, however, was huge, as thin as a cicada"s wings, and it was so cold that the frost would seep right into one"s bone. It was as hard as dark ice as it was extremely sharp.

It seemed so much easier for Qin Ruo to a.n.a.lyze this skill…

After separating it repeatedly, the three ladies clearly understood what Qin Ruo was doing. Unlike the Darkfrost Sting that was cast by any ordinary Aquamancer, Qin Ruo had entirely performed the true process of casting the Darkfrost Sting right in front of the three ladies—Casting, Transfigure, Ice Condensation!

It did seem a little imperfect during the first few times, but as he kept repeating the process, the Darkfrost Sting that was refined by Qin Ruo looked completely like a skill that was directly cast using magic.

But then again, in terms of control over the time, Qin Ruo had also saved some time. Almost 5 seconds of casting time had been reduced to less than 4 seconds by him… The three ladies were rendered speechless as their jaws dropped, unable to say a word to describe their astonishment. The Tier 1 rookie Aquamancer Xiaoxiao seemed to have gotten an even bigger inspiration as she gradually sank into deep thoughts.

Time quickly pa.s.sed by unbeknownst to them.

When Xiaoxiao had grind her level to the bottleneck of Level 19, it was already 7.30 in the morning. After looking at the three to five rookie players walking toward the small town, Qin Ruo finally bade his farewell to the three ladies who kept yawning. He was now ready to go offline and get some sleep.

The one still unwilling to go offline was Xiaoxiao who had just joined the game recently. Her excitement had yet to fade away. She even seemed eager to complete her quest to advance into Tier 2 and learn Tier 2 spells such as Frostbullet, Icicle Barrage, and also Aquabarrier before going offline. But then again, she had not left the game since yesterday afternoon. It was already more than twelve hours in real time. Her internal organs were beginning to madly send out distress calls. As such, she had no choice but to follow everyone back to the main city.

After going offline, Qin Ruo went out to get his stomach filled. He then took a nap.

It was already noon when he got up again. He switched on the computer in the apartment as he routinely scrolled through the posts on the H&G website. After confirming that there was no activity and nothing worth to take note of, he remained in silence right in front of the computer for a moment. He recalled the post that Xiaoxiao mentioned a few hours ago. He was moved by the notion as he signed in to the official H&G forum.

Without reason, the snow eagle that was lifelike and full of vitality, looking powerful and extraordinary appeared in his mind. The rapid and ferocious posture, and its emerging power while it soared high up in the sky and lunged toward its target was so immense that Qin Ruo kept feeling that the Intermediate Elementalism “Transfigure” was not a simple skill at all. Other than that, he also believed that the Snow Eagle could be combined and formed into shape using Elementalism.

He typed “Elementalism” into the search toolbar and clicked confirm. Soon after that, Qin Ruo felt overwhelmed as there was a total of more than 400,000 related posts that appeared on the result of his search!

‘What in the world…"

Qin Ruo quickly added the word “Water” into the search bar before the first word that he typed. After that, there were still tens of thousands of related posts. He simply clicked open one of the posts and took a look at it. Everything that he found was Elementalism for Novices. Among them, there was also the “Water condensed into Ice” that Qin Ruo commonly used, the Freezing skill, Multiple Frostburst… and also some simple a.n.a.lysis and explanations about the combination of skills.

But then again, these information that might be useful for Novice players had no value at all to Qin Ruo who had been relying on Elementalism to earn a living. So, he just glanced through the list and get over with it.

After that, he entered the words “Water Elementalism Transfigure” and clicked confirm.

Only thirteen related posts appeared.

One by one, Qin Ruo glanced through the posts continuously and kept rolling his eyes. By the end of it, he closed all of them and pushed the keyboard forward in frustration as he stood back up on his feet. Feeling a little depressed, he decided to go up the balcony. He could not help but keep repeating these words quietly in his heart, ‘F*ck this. Using Transfigure to create movement and get entertained… what a true bunch of boring people."

“I"m online now.”

“You"re still sleeping, I see. Then I shall go and complete my quests first.”

“Hmm! The Tier 2 Advancement Quest is really simple! I just need to kill two Level 22 Viridian Monsterflame Toad…”

“Quest completed! Hehe. I"m now Level 20, a true Tier 2 Aquamancer! I"m going to grind my level now! Hehe. After you"ve come online, find a place and play on your own then. I"ve found myself a good spot to grind.”

The moment Qin Ruo had just logged into the game and arrived at the town, Xiaoxiao"s voice immediately came from the automatic voice message box and echoed in his ears.

A bright smile appeared on Qin Ruo"s face as he felt more relieved. Just a moment ago, his mind was a little welled up with emotion. It seemed that Xiaoxiao was also attracted to this type of game, or else she would not have come back to the game so quickly. But she was still behaving like she always had. She had always been compa.s.sionate toward others, thinking about how they were doing. She did not want to continue delaying Qin Ruo"s progress.

That was not the point, though. Today was Sat.u.r.day, a day that felt hard to come by. Qin Ruo would need to properly plan his schedule. He could not afford to waste any more of his time. As for Tier 4 spells, he already had experienced it beforehand. As such, he now had a rough understanding of them. He could also earn his Mastery Points for his Tier 4 spell during battle. It would just be the same. He did not need to spend more time and energy to purposely find a spot to try perfecting his skills.

At an appropriate time, Qin Ruo sent a voice message to Xiaoxiao to greet her. The two of them then asked each other about their own situations. After that, Qin Ruo returned to Savis Town and brought the loots he had obtained from his Tier 4 Advancement Quest to the appraisal shop to get them all identified. That included the necklace that was already socketed with the Deepblue Frostsoul which the NPC Elder had pa.s.sed back to Qin Ruo.

The results of identifying more than ten Violet Equipment had yet to come back. Qin Ruo had shockingly discovered that the Frostsoul Necklace that he acquired and had yet to give a closer look was in fact Gold tier…

A Tier 4 Gold Accessory!

Holy c.r.a.p!

A piece of Tier 4 Gold Accessory could not be bought due to the supply shortage of goods even though it had a market value! It was rumored that even though many champions had a full set of Gold or Dark-Gold Equipment, only a very small number among them could actually gather a complete set of Gold Accessories. Some of them did not even possess a single piece of Gold Accessory…

At one point, the Gold Accessories were even described by players as Accessories worth the value of Dark Gold Equipment. Furthermore, it was also true that some people were willing to trade their normal Dark Gold Equipments to get Gold Accessories! From the looks of that, it remained to be seen how valuable and rare the Gold Accessories were in the game.

Upon resting his thoughts on the fact that he had a Gold Accessory in his hand right now, Qin Ruo was so anxious that his heart started to beat faster. He even found it difficult to swallow his own saliva. He quickly glanced through the players who were currently in the appraisal shop! After confirming that no one had noticed the presence of his necklace, he swiftly grabbed all Violent Equipment on the counter that were already identified into his backpack.

After putting the Frostsoul Necklace among the other few Blue Equipment that were the last batch to be identified…

A golden light flashed and faded. The other players glanced at the counter, curious about the sudden appearance of the golden flash. Qin Ruo, however, had already grabbed the Frostsoul Necklace and left the shop quietly!