Ashen God
Chapter 274 - 273: [Death Wave LV.MAX]

Chapter 274: Chapter 273: [Death Wave LV.MAX]

"Forget it, let’s not think about equipment for now. Next, I should upgrade my skills. Speaking of which, I haven’t checked how many soul points I gained after opening the treasure box," Zhang Yanhang said while checking his soul points balance.

Soul points: 34539 (+34465)

"I remember I had only 74 soul points left before, but now, after killing about three or four thousand Crimson Iron Ants, I’ve instantly regained 34465 soul points.

With so many soul points, I feel like I can raise the Death Wave Skill to LV.MAX directly. I hope the additional attributes gained when Death Wave reaches LV.MAX will be somewhat useful this time; I really don’t want to repeat past mistakes."

Regarding the additional ability gained when Death Wave upgraded to LV.6, Zhang Yanhang felt, after hunting monsters in the Ashen World for a while, that the effect which made friendly targets immune to the Death Wave attack was truly useless, because in the Ashen World there really weren’t any targets worthy of being considered friendly.

Zhang Yanhang guessed that the only scenario in which he might use this ability would be when cooperating with other Awakeners to explore the Ashen World, but that was definitely impossible.

Because if other Awakeners hunted the monsters, it would be a pure waste. The main reason was that even Awakeners like the group leader, who were Ordinary Awakeners, would have to kill dozens of same-tier monsters to barely drop a treasure box.

Compared to Zhang Yanhang’s previous maximum rate of opening a treasure box after killing eight or nine monsters, it was a worlds difference. Even now, with his drop rate halved due to rank penalty while hunting First Tier Crimson Iron Ants, it was still a rate other Awakeners couldn’t even imagine.

Perhaps only those with Luck System-related powers would be able to get close to such a drop rate, but achieving Zhang Yanhang’s previous rate of a treasure box from every eight or nine Crimson Iron Ants was still completely impossible.

Therefore, if other Awakeners were to kill some of the monsters, the overall yield of the area would drastically decrease to a pitiable level.

Moreover, apart from the very low treasure box drop rate, Ordinary Awakeners had little chance of opening valuable items, or to put it bluntly, even if they did manage to open something, it would usually just be some guaranteed basic items.

For example, Zhang Yanhang could multiply the soul points gained from hunting monsters by ten with just one option, but Ordinary Awakeners could only manage the lowest base number of soul points. Even if adding up three item slots, it would only be three times, whereas Zhang Yanhang’s three options combined guaranteed at least thirty times the soul point income.

The gap in the efficiency of their returns was enormous; therefore, theoretically, if the soul point income rate for Zhang Yanhang when hunting same-tier monsters was at least four times more, then the efficiency for Ordinary Awakeners would roughly be around one point zero something.

Ordinary Awakeners were essentially relying purely on the soul points from killing monsters to improve themselves, as they definitely couldn’t count on the treasure boxes for much gain.

It was precisely because he knew that having multiple choice options could create such a large income gap compared to other Ordinary Awakeners that Zhang Yanhang had the confidence to catch up with the Awakener bigwigs who had awakened their powers and entered the Ashen World to hunt monsters six months prior.

Just considering the gap in income rates, overtaking these Awakener bigwigs was a foregone conclusion; it was just a matter of time. Now, he was working hard to advance to Third Tier.

Zhang Yanhang estimated that by the time of his birthday in February next year, he would at least become a Fifth Tier, if not a Sixth Tier Awakener, after all, there were still roughly three and a half months left until February.

Based on the schedule he had planned for himself, to advance to Third Tier in three weeks and Fourth Tier in four weeks, there would be at least over a month left after reaching Fourth Tier and before his birthday, so advancing to Fifth Tier should still be feasible.

In conclusion, a simple calculation of the average efficiency revealed that having Zhang Yanhang team up with other Awakeners to clear out the Ashen World would result in a reduction of his earnings. He was at four times the efficiency on his own, whereas ordinary Awakeners operated at one-time efficiency, so when combined, the average efficiency came to two and a half times.

Since each region in the Ashen World had a fixed total number of monsters, this meant that dropping from four times the earnings to two and a half times was essentially equivalent to Zhang Yanhang losing a portion of potential income out of thin air.

And what did he gain from it? Just some time saved from hunting, yet he wasn’t lacking in time, and one might even say he was quite free.

After all, Zhang Yanhang was just a college student and didn’t need to work, with the complete freedom to manage his own time, so instead of cooperating with other Awakeners to save time, Zhang Yanhang much preferred solo hunting in the Ashen World.

Moreover, besides the potential reduction in earnings, there was another downside to teaming up with other Awakeners to clear the Ashen World, which was a lowering of the Evaluation Level for the Ashen Treasure Box.

Evaluating Level determined the maximum Quality of the Items that could be obtained from an Ashen Treasure Box. Once he cooperated with others, inevitably a portion of the completion would be taken by partners, and by then, it would be wishful thinking to retain an EX Level, let alone guarantee an S Level for Zhang Yanhang—it would indeed be a huge loss.

Furthermore, if Zhang Yanhang used the Talent dropped by monsters in areas collaboratively developed, like Raccoon City and Crimson Iron Ant Nest, it meant that potential earnings would be further reduced.

Essentially, every monster killed by other Awakeners was passively reducing the maximum achievable Quality of the Talent that Zhang Yanhang was using.

It was for these reasons, which could significantly decrease his potential earnings, that Zhang Yanhang always hunted monsters in the Ashen World alone.

By the way, Zhang Yanhang used to frequently see information about other Awakeners forming teams to hunt in the Ashen World in the dedicated group chat organized by the group’s owner, but he had never paid attention to it.

Besides, many of the other Awakeners teamed up to hunt in the Ashen World, largely due to concerns about their own safety, feeling that having a teammate might reduce the chances of death, but Zhang Yanhang didn’t worry about this at all.

For Zhang Yanhang, unless he encountered monsters with abilities like those of the Space System or Time System, with his Technique Immunity and Supreme Will coupled with the multidimensional, all-angle protection of the Indestructible Golden Body Skill, even if he couldn’t defeat them, escaping would certainly not be a problem.

Of course, Low-level monsters surely wouldn’t have space-system or time-system abilities, which were bug-level powers. When he would eventually encounter monsters with such abilities, Zhang Yanhang’s Rank would have also accordingly advanced to a new level, and by then he should have already acquired relevant protective abilities.

Thus, as long as Zhang Yanhang didn’t foolishly venture into Fourth Tier Regions to hunt while at Second Tier, there was basically no need to worry about his safety.

In fact, it was quite the opposite; monsters needed to fear for their lives, as Zhang Yanhang would leave no stone unturned, ensuring that every monster was cleared out before moving on to the next area.

"Well, it’s not like I can form a team; that’s impossible unless I can gain more benefits than just hunting monsters. In that case, I might consider it. For now, let’s just go ahead and level up my skills. Choose! Skill Level Enhancement!"

Zhang Yanhang felt that if he spent all of his 30,000-plus soul points this time, his power was definitely going to see another significant increase.

[Do you wish to enhance Skill Level?]

[Option One: ’Gun Master LV.MAX’ upgrade to ’Grandmaster LV.5’ (Costs 1 Ash Source and 51,200 soul points.)]

...

[Option Five: ’Limitless Universe Skill [Second Tier] LV.4’ upgrade to ’Limitless Universe Skill [Second Tier] LV.5’ (Costs 9,660 soul points.)]

[Option Six: ’Alchemy’ upgrade to ’???’ (Cannot be enhanced.)]

[Option Seven: ’Death Wave LV.6’ upgrade to ’Death Wave LV.7’ (Costs 1,600 soul points.)]

[Option Eight: ’Supreme Will LV.3’ upgrade to ’Supreme Will LV.4’ (Costs 200 soul points.)]

[Option Nine: ’Indestructible Golden Body LV.5’ upgrade to ’Indestructible Golden Body LV.6’ (Costs 800 soul points.)]

"Although I had anticipated it, I still can’t help but complain about how drastically the requirements for leveling up the Limitless Universe Skill have increased. It’s only LV.5 now, and it needs 9,660 soul points, which rounds up to 10,000 soul points. I remember it only took about 7,000 soul points to level up to LV.4 last time.

Sigh, just moving up one level cost me an extra 3,000 soul points. That’s an even steeper increase than for Profession Levels, which consistently go up by 2,000 points each time. But the Limitless Universe Skill keeps requiring more and more.

Like the First Tier, the Second Tier Limitless Universe Skill has Ten Layers, but now, having just reached the halfway point, it already needs 10,000 soul points. The remaining five layers are definitely starting with five-digit figures. By the time it reaches LV.9 or LV.10, I estimate each layer will require tens of thousands of soul points to upgrade."

After a rough estimate, Zhang Yanhang realized that the total gains from a small-sized Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dala Gu wouldn’t be enough to max out his Limitless Universe Skill, not to mention that he also needed to level up his Profession and Skills.

It seems, Zhang Yanhang felt, he would have to wait until next week when he clears the Goblin Plain if he wants to max out his Limitless Universe Skill.

"Although the Limitless Universe Skill is expensive, I can barely raise it two levels with the 30,000-plus soul points I have now. However, the Death Wave Skill is much cheaper. It only needs 12,800 soul points to reach LV.10, so I can use my soul points to increase the Death Wave Skill by four levels and max it out directly.

Therefore, I choose Option Seven, to increase the Death Wave Skill to LV.7."

This time, Zhang Yanhang planned to first max out the Death Wave Skill and then use the remaining soul points to upgrade the Limitless Universe Skill. And if there were any soul points left after maxing out the Limitless Universe Skill, naturally, those would go toward upgrading the Indestructible Golden Body.

...

With previous experience, Zhang Yanhang already knew that the added attributes of the Death Wave Skill were fixed rewards. Thus, he didn’t wait for a non-existent lottery option and directly checked the skill effect of Death Wave LV.MAX.

[Death Wave LV.MAX (Passive/Active)]

[Passive effect: Weaken the enemy’s defensive power by 10% (+4%).]

[Active effect: Upon skill activation, inflict 250 (+100) + 5.0 (+2.0) × 46 (Intelligence) + 5.0 (+2.0) × 24 (Charm) = 600 points (+255 points) of fixed damage to everyone within the coverage area.

Coverage area 500 meters (+200 meters), only able to cause damage to the same target once within 24 hours. No cooldown time, consumes a small amount of Physical Strength.]

[Additional Attribute: Skillful—You have now achieved skillful control over the Death Wave Skill, gaining the ability to mark friendly targets, who will be immune to the fixed damage from Death Wave Skill.]

[Additional Attribute: Mastery—Your control over the Death Wave Skill has become more proficient. You have gained the ability to freely manipulate the coverage area of the Death Wave Skill (only to reduce it), and when the coverage area is reduced, the Physical Strength consumption will also decrease accordingly.]

"Great, unlike when I upgraded to LV.6, the added abilities I get from upgrading to LV.10 this time are quite useful. If I can reduce Physical Strength consumption by minimizing the range, then I can cast the Death Wave Skill more times without increasing my Stamina limit."

Compared to the added ability he got at LV.6, Zhang Yanhang was quite pleased with the additional abilities of Death Wave LV.10. Although it wasn’t an increase in the power of the Death Wave Skill, increasing its number of uses was also beneficial.

In fact, Zhang Yanhang had always felt that the coverage area of the Death Wave Skill was often wasted.

For example, monsters in the Crimson Iron Ant Nest only gathered within a few dozen meters or a hundred meters around him, while there were no more monsters at greater distances. Yet, the Death Wave Skill would extend straight to the furthest point, reaching its coverage limit.

In such cases, it was a significant waste, but now, having reached LV.MAX, he could finally control the coverage of the Death Wave Skill.

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