Game’s Dogma

While Empyreon was being split between the two alliances, Evergrand was slowly but surely getting on track.

After that quest, Ying Tin exposed Bloodless Bladester’s strength to the public, and Bloodless Bladester was no longer the same. While he was still the friendly diplomat most of the time, he became Hades’ sharpest blade whenever necessary.

Bloodless Bladester led Underworld’s forces to war against Six Nations, the second largest guild in Evergrand, and gave them a beating. Six Nations’ reputation took a great hit. With that, Underworld’s authority in Evergrand stabilised and they soon integrated the city into one. Underworld was now in charge of distributing stores and regions within the city, turning Evergrand into the second commercial city after Yoda.

Players welcomed the great news. While Yoda had long become a commercial city, there was no improvement without competition. Stores in Yoda had always marked up their prices by a fair bit and players wouldn’t mind; Yoda was the best place to shop at after all, with stores categorised throughout the city neatly. The shopping experience here was simply incomparable to chaotic streets where some stores sold equipment while others sold groceries.

Now that Evergrand was also a commercial city, Yoda could no longer monopolise the commercial sector and mark up their prices as much.

Level-wise, the player base had also improved a lot—the average player level was now at Level 35. However, many were complaining about how difficult it was to level up now.

The reason was simple: Level 40 maps and dungeons weren’t available yet, and that surprised Drako Yau.

Now, players mostly relied on clearing quests from the Mercenary Guild, the sub-Level 40 maps within the Highlands of John, and the two dungeons of John to level up. In fact, everyone had to thank Drako Yau for triggering John’s Secret Chamber by accident, or else levelling up would only become more tedious.

Drako Yau was now Level 37 and had learnt four new Level 35 skills: Flame Absorption, Frozen Strike, Enhanced Fiery Dance, and Ice Body.

Level 35 Godly Spearmaster skill, Flame Absorption: Manipulate the surrounding fire elements and pull in enemies within a metre, dealing minor flame damage to them. Increases Attack for 10 seconds based on the number of enemies pulled in. Each enemy increases Attack by 10%, up to 50%.

It was a short-range crowd control skill, but it wasn’t too effective due to its short range. To make it more useful, Drako Yau had to invest skill points into it, though levelling it up once only increased the range by ten centimetres. He was still considering whether he should level it up more. Still, having one more skill to apply Grilled Erudite’s flame buff was also nice.

Level 35 Godly Spearmaster skill, Frozen Strike. Absorb the surrounding ice elements and thrust, dealing damage in a three-metre-long straight line and freeze all damaged enemies for 1.5 seconds.

The skill was alright at best. While it could freeze the enemy and could be cast quickly, its range wasn’t anything great, making it hard to land. To his dismay, both active skills turned out mediocre; his passive skill was what gave him a surprise.

Level 35 Godly Spearmaster skill, Enhanced Fiery Dance: Enhances the skill “Fiery Dance”, increasing its chance of inflicting burn on the enemy and flame damage.

Level 35 Godly Spearmaster skill, Ice Body: Freezes the enemy for 1.5 seconds when struck by an attack at a low chance.

Ice and fire both had their strengths. The former inflicted slowness and froze the enemy, while the latter dealt continuous burn damage over time and huge explosive damage through Grilled Erudite. In a sense, Enhanced Fiery Dance was even better than the two active skills.

Ice Body was another luck-based skill that could flip the odds when lucky enough. Considering that Flame Dance almost never activated, Drako Yau didn’t have high hopes for this skill; relying on it was no different from buying a lottery.

Drako Yau had also felt the difficulty of levelling up first-hand. Even though he could single-handedly clear all difficulties of John’s Laboratory and went to level up in the wilderness every day, he was still levelling up at a snail’s pace—and that was with his experience buff from Lunafilia.

Who on earth is this Barefooty Worldrunner?

He couldn’t help but wonder. Reaching Level 44 when Level 40 maps weren’t out was a god-tier achievement. However, no one had ever met this levelling master, further increasing his mysteriousness.

“You’re still too fixated on moves and form.”

Only two people were currently in the spacious training ground in the Dragon Alliance base. Drako Yau was instructing Dumbgirl on Dragon Seeker; as she was his first disciple, he took on his duties as master seriously.

The most difficult thing about Dragon Seeker was picking it up. It was similar to Drako Yau’s spearmanship in nature, but the arms had hundreds or thousands more variations compared to the spear. Forearm, upper arm, fingers, joints, palms, fists… There were simply far too many techniques and variations to hardwire them into one’s mind as Drako Yau did with his spear.

The training regimen for Dragon Seeker was rather contradictory. Dumbgirl had to memorise all moves and forms, then forget everything afterwards. Only that way could she break free from the limitations of forms and turn moves into instincts.

Dumbgirl took in a deep breath and huffed. She relaxed from her stance and nodded seriously.

“Papa, I will work harder,” she said and blinked her large, round eyes cutely.

“Good girl.”

Drako Yau patted her head. While Dumbgirl wasn’t too talented, she was extremely hardworking; he just knew she was going to become a master one day if she kept this up.

Ding!

He had a look at the message from Sasaki, which read, “Boss, are you free?”

“Yeah, why?”

Sasaki sounded excited as he said, “Our craftsmen at Ki Industries have crafted a high-grade product. Do you have a moment to take a look at it?”

“Oh?”

In the workshop deep behind Ki Industries’ store in Yoda, a group of old craftsmen were nodding in satisfaction at the product in front of them. Standing beside them were the stunned Sasaki and Windstrider.

Bringing craftsmanship from the actual world into the game worked surprisingly well, Sasaki thought.

Soon, a figure entered the workshop. Drako Yau walked over and asked, “What’s this?”

The seniors frowned and berated him. “Are young people so impudent these days? How rude of you to enter without knocking.”

Cheh. Sasaki clicked his tongue silently. Our company has been treating these old craftsmen like living treasure, so they’re quite a prideful bunch. I hope the boss isn’t bothered by their attitude…

Windstrider furrowed his brows as well. However, Drako Yau didn’t seem to mind—his eyes were fixed only on the piece of furniture in the room.

“That’s the one?” he asked.

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