They felt the world shift around them, and suddenly they stood inside the System’s Safe Zone.
Selene turned to look at Cipher, waiting for his instructions.
"Since you’ve been here before, why don’t you take the lead instead," Cipher said.
"Alright," she said, stepping forward.
"Since you’ve already raided a world, you aren’t newbies anymore, so I won’t recap what you already know," she began. She looked at the team, her expression serious. "Things are changing. Not only inside the apocalypse worlds, but even more so outside."
She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in.
"Just yesterday, the Church of Eternal Brilliance launched an attack against the Organization. Many captains were deployed to deal with it, including me. That’s why I couldn’t join you."
Her gaze swept across each of them. "Although we won’t be deployed to research the new changes going on with the gates after joining Cipher’s branch, we can still be deployed to defend against external threats to the Association. That’s why you need to get strong, and quickly. Do you understand?"
The three nodded.
She smiled. "Good. As long as you understand." Her tone lightened slightly. "As for this world, there isn’t much to do. You guys can just fight monsters and level up. I’ll look after Cipher, so you don’t have to worry about that and can go all out."
"Alright then, let’s go," she said, walking towards the huge gate with the others following close behind.
...
The gate swung open and the group found itself before a large crowd of people.
At the front stood one man. He didn’t seem all that old - about Cipher’s age - but he was well decorated with full knight armor that didn’t look cheap, a red cape, and a golden sword.
Cipher instantly used Appraisal on him. After the previous uses during the test, he had realized that people couldn’t detect when he used his appraisal. The heavenly demon was just a special case.
Name : Zero
Rank : S
Level : 300
Species : Spirit
Health : 35,000/35,000
Mana : 4,000/4,000
Strength : 380
Stamina : 350
Agility : 320
Intelligence : 400
Skills : Holy Sword (S), Divine Judgment (S), Hero’s Courage (A), Aura (A), Unwavering Will (A), Divine Protection (B), Battle Instinct (B), Leadership (C)
"S-rank..." Even though he had expected something like this, he was still a little surprised.
"Outsiders!" the people exclaimed.
"The divine revelation was true! The goddess really summoned outsiders!" They began murmuring among themselves.
Zero raised his hand, and everyone quieted down. He walked forward, stopping before Cipher’s group. "Outsiders, will you join me in the battle against the Demon King?" he asked.
"Sure," Selene responded.
Zero turned around, raising his sword high. "Everyone, the outsiders have decided to help us! Let’s march to the Demonic Forest!" he declared.
"Yeah!" the others shouted, raising their swords in response.
...
A few minutes later, Cipher and the rest were walking with the other group, led by Zero at the front.
"Don’t those people ever get tired?" Ryker sighed. The group had been chanting for a while now, and they didn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
Cipher stepped next to Selene. "I’ve been meaning to ask..." he began.
"Sure, what is it?" she asked.
He had looked at the description of the hero’s A-ranked Aura skill. It was just like before - it had the same exact description as his D-rank Aura. "I noticed something strange with skills," he began.
"Why does a higher-ranked version of the same skill have the same description as the lower-ranked version? Even the effects are all the same," he asked.
"For example, my D-rank Aura skill, Ryker’s C rank, and the Hero’s A rank all seem to have the same exact description" he said.
"Oh, that?" Selene spoke. "The skill descriptions apply only within their rank limit."
"Rank limit?" He asked.
"That’s right," she continued, "Every skill can only calculate its effects based on stats up to its rank’s maximum threshold. Once your stats go beyond that cap, the skill’s bonus stops scaling with them."
"I still don’t follow,"
"Let me give you an example," Selene said. "You said you have D-rank Aura, right?"
Cipher nodded.
"D-rank skills cap at 39 for their related stat as that’s the limit for D-rank. Any higher and that’s C rank." She looked at him to make sure he was following. "So if you have 39 Strength, the skill calculates its effect based on all of it. But if you have, say, 80 Strength, the skill only applies its effect to the first 39 points. The remaining 41 points deal normal damage without the skill’s bonus."
"So when you use D rank aura with 50 strength, you deal 890 damage ((390×2) + 110), but if you use C-rank aura with 50 strength, you deal 1000 damage (500×2)."
Cipher’s eyes widened slightly. "So the higher the rank, the higher the cap where the skill remains fully effective."
"Exactly," Selene nodded. "This also applies to other effects. Like if you have an E rank skill that gives an unbreakable curse. This only applies within the range of the rank, if you have a D rank curse resistance skill, you can break the unbreakable curse" she explained.
Cipher nodded, he finally understood what was going on with the skills. He looked at his own mana recovery skill, it seemed it wasn’t as OP as he had initially thought. Since mana recovery was E rank and his mana was already D rank, mana recovery’s effects would only apply up to the limit of E rank intelligence which was 19.
Since it recovered 0.5% of total mana for every ten seconds that he was out of combat, this meant that the full mana would only be calculated as 190. Meaning he would always recover only 0.95 mana for every ten seconds he was out of combat.
He supposed it was fine for now as even though he only recovered 0.95 mana, there was no cap to this and he would eventually be able to recover his full mana. The only problem was that, as he continued advancing and his mana capacity increased, this tiny recovery speed might not be as useful.
He needed to find a way to upgrade the skill to D rank to match his current stats. But how?
...
Author’s Corner
((390×2) + 110) the ×2 is from aura’s 200% boost. (not accounting for Cipher’s ’rigged’ edition)
If there is something you don’t understand or notice any errors, leave a comment and me fix them.