Chapter 71: Parallel Comprehension
[Health: 85%]
The third Frost Sword flash only depletes 15% of my health.
Annan raised his brows. A wild guess came to his mind.
If he guessed correctly, this [Frost Sword] was not so much a swordsmanship skill but more of supernatural ability.
In other words, this was a key to awaken the bloodline power safely.
Annan had realized previously that if he utilized the Frost Sword consecutively, the damage of each attack would not increase too much, but the injury he suffered would double. This was unreasonable and not practical. Chilly Austere’s Grand Duke would not teach Annan seriously about it and ushered Annan to hone the skill if the skill was awful.
When Annan utilized [Frost Sword] while activating Frost Nova, he realized some differences. However, the enemy was already dead. Annan wasn’t sure if this was an illusion.
When he delivered the third slash himself, he felt that the power of Frost Nova seemed to increase a bit.
Because before Annan’s third slash hit Gerald, Gerald died suddenly.
As a matter of fact, Annan couldn’t inflict critical damage on Gerald at first.
Annan’s [Frost Nova] could freeze a robust unranked soldier to death within five seconds. When the player under mind manipulation got in contact with Annan, his health bar emptied instantly.
On the contrary, Gerald stayed within Annan’s Frost Nova range. Although he was rendered unable to move, he could still struggle at his spot. Aside from dodging the Frost Wheel, the Slothful Eye effect ran off in about three seconds.
If it weren’t for Annan to supplement another crowd control effect (CC) [1] in time, even under Frost Nova’s support, he would not be able to stop Gerald.
Therefore, ordinary unranked people had no curse resistance. But when they became Transcended, they would more or less get a little resistance. This curse resistance would mainly allow them to resist the side effects of their abilities.
At the Silver Rank level, Annan would be like Gerald. Those curses lower than his soul rank would be difficult to stop him.
Annan even felt that when his mana was exhausted beyond the safety threshold, he might still not be able to freeze Gerald to death through spells alone.
But when Annan utilized the Frost Sword to deliver the third slash, he felt that Frost Nova became colder and colder.
Gerald was immediately frozen to death.
It was just like…
As the number of Frost Sword stacks got higher and higher, Frost Nova’s “spell penetration” would increase.
He had verifed it when he activated the Frost Sword twice. The curse did not increase the damage to his body, but the strange thing about it was that its destructive power did not seem to increase.
With that, Annan got an idea.
Could the elemental damage of Frost Sword itself be a complimentary gift? What is important is the cold curse spurting out from my body?
Is it because I’m a newbie and my body can’t handle it?
Maybe when the Chilly Austere family utilizes the Frost Sword, they don’t use it to deliver the killing blow. Instead, they use it to trigger the buff of magic piercing or ice piercing.
After all, it’s just like a profession with five swords on the back [2]. It can increase the damage after slashing the same person repet.i.tively.
I don’t know whether this is “damage penetration,” “spell penetration,” or “attribute damage penetration.”
Annan thought for a while and decided to tap on the Frost Sword.
Since Frost Sword’s skill level determined the penetration effect brought by the buff, then the penetration effect should be p.r.o.nounced when the skill points were filled.
So Annan first a.s.signed the experience to the swordsman level and then promoted the wizard level by one.
His attribute panel became like this:
Annan. Human. Male.
Elite Rare (Gold), Challenge Rating15
t.i.tle: None
Rank: Bronze
Health: 85%
Erosion: 8%
Attributes: Strength 10, Agility 9, Const.i.tution 9, Perception 25, Will 14
Shared Experience: 303
Unique Trait: Winter Heart [Reverse Inscription]
Profession Overview-
Swordsman LV10 (Available to be advanced): [Chilly Austere Swordsmanship LV5], [Disarm LV1], [Frost Sword LV7], [Parallel Comprehension LV1]
Wizard (Energy Falteration School) LV12: [Instant spells LV3 (Chilling Touch, Slothful Eye, None)], [Guided spells LV2 (Impeding Wall, Frost Nova)], [Chant spells LV1 (Frost Wheel)]
Annan found his vision grew clearer, his mind more serene, and his body became st.u.r.dier. But fortunately, his muscles didn’t go bulging all of a sudden and his clothes didn’t burst because of the sudden increase in the strength attribute. All in all, Annan’s body did not seem to have undergone any changes in appearance.
The swordsman profession level increased, raising Annan’s various physical attributes equally. On the tenth level, the previous [Bodyguard Swordsmanship] evolved into [Chilly Austere Swordsmanship]. A new ability [Parallel Comprehension LV1] was granted as well.
It allowed Annan to utilize Chilly Austere Swordsmanship and Frost Sword with full power when using other weapons close to the “one-handed sword.”
Level 1 was roughly the level at which Annan could use light one-handed hammers, light clubs, and long daggers.
Fortunately, Annan’s beloved kitchen knife seemed to be cla.s.sified as a long dagger type.
Annan suddenly felt the kitchen knife in his hand be in unity with his arm. He could even do knife tricks like juggling.
That’s great! Annan did not feel like he wasted the skill points.
After all, even investing the remaining skill points in Frost Sword wouldn’t allow it to reach the upper limit of level seven. Moreover, he didn’t have the free skill points to increase the level of [Parallel Comprehension].
But Annan was still a little curious.
If the [Parallel Comprehension] level increases, what will happen?
It was a pity that he couldn’t have a player to test it for him first.
That still should not be much of a challenge. Anna just had to save up some skill points and flushed all of it into this skill in one go.
But the problem was that the players might not obtain this skill when they reached level ten.
After all, their initial skills were different from Annan.
Annan could see from the backend interface that the player template had only one swordsmanship to choose from, which was [Basic Swordsmanship]. But he could also sense that Basic Swordsmanship had its higher ranking version, but it was grayed out under the fifth level template called [Military Swordsmanship].
[Parry], [Charge], and [All-out Blow] all came from Basic Swordsmanship.
The skill type of Basic Swordsmanship and Military Swordsmanship were in the same branch, except that one skill was missing – [Solid Footwork].
When the players’ swordsman level was upgraded to tenth, they probably would have the same changes as Annan.
Annan wasn’t so sure.
After all, his template was different from the player’s template.
His template was Elite Rare with gold font. The template for the players was called “player,” but the font was blue.
With Annan’s game planner experience, he intuitively sensed that there should be a lot of difference between the two templates.
It’s impossible that the gap between the players and me is only four times the mana value, right?
Although having four times the mana value is already quite exaggerating.
But what made Annan feel inexplicable was that he found that level upgrade as a Bronze Rank Wizard required too much experience!
About a thousand experiences were enough to max out a basic profession. But the Bronze Wizard would consume this amount of experience at the promotion to first level. In other words, the experience required was tenfold the amount it took to increase from the ninth to the tenth level.
In the end, the experience granted from killing a Silver Rank enemy was only enough to raise a Bronze Rank profession by one level.
Worse still, a promotion at the wizard level did not lead to an increment in other attributes. Instead, it only added 2 points in Perception attributes for every level up.
Annan was vaguely disturbed.
Due to the current experience required, Annan could only resort to farming the dungeon instance experience after Silver Rank.
After all, the Gold Rank enemies wouldn’t line up for Annan to kill.
In addition, Annan always felt that there was a problem with the calculation of the Challenge Rating.
What does rating 15 mean? Isn’t it too low?
Does it mean that a 15 rating Bronze Rank can easily destroy me?
But Annan felt that he was far from being so weak.
Perhaps, does it mean that it will take five Bronze Ranks of 15 ratings to defeat me?
It can’t be twenty-five Bronze Ranks of 15 ratings, right?
[1] MOBA game terminology. CC stands for crowd control, any abilities or status effects that prevent, impede, or otherwise inhibit a Hero from acting.
[2] Reference to a China Game: