Super Righteous Player
Chapter 346 - 344 Salvatore’s Perseverance_1

Chapter 346: Chapter 344 Salvatore’s Perseverance_1

"Bernardino Treshaw?"

Salvatore, clad in pajamas, slightly furrowed his brow and held a hot cup in his hands, "Why has he come?"

Clarence, sitting on the cabinet, shrugged his shoulders, "He wants me to inherit his path."

"A spirit monk? Ha... forget about it."

Salvatore yawned casually and scoffed, "Lose most of your mind-reading abilities just to turn into that neither-human-nor-ghost figure?

"Is this so-called Tradition really that scary?"

"After all, it is tradition."

Clarence pushed up his glasses and chuckled softly, "’Necromancers’ indeed are our predecessors and ancestors... Could this be considered retro?"

"This is called being outdated."

Salvatore said, unapologetically, "Senior Clarence, don’t you believe his nonsense.

"There is a reason necromancers became obsolete. Today’s wizards of the eight factions have undergone the trials of time, the tests of blood and fire in unifying wars, to finally take shape. The Soul Snatching School chose the path of controlling minds rather than controlling souls, and it certainly has its reasons..."

"Because practicality is the most important reason."

"Yes..."

Salvatore took a sip of the hot honey water, murmuring with a low sigh, "But sentiment does exist...

"Just like I know that ’Grand Wizard’ is the most practical advancement, otherwise it wouldn’t be so common. But I still chose ’Alchemist’."

He had already passed the advancement exam with exceptionally good results.

And afterward, once he chose his general Curse Binding type, the Tower Master gave him the "Dream Key" to enter a designated nightmare and directly told him what choices to make in the nightmare, what might happen as a result, and what Curse Binding he could possibly obtain after coming out.

This was considered a privilege of the White Tower Wizards.

Generations of inheritance in the Wizard’s Towers’ archive had allowed wizards to develop a considerable understanding of nightmares and Curse Bindings.

Generally speaking, apart from the Hunter profession, the choice of Curse Bindings by other Transcendents could only follow two schools:

One is like Annan, selecting those that have as little impact on oneself as possible. Aim for no faults rather than accomplishments.

And the second... is to utilize the special mechanism of Curse Bindings.

In the process of collecting a large amount of data, wizards inadvertently discovered the judgment mechanism of Curse Bindings.

The Holy Oath and Clergy are the highest level of Curse Bindings, whose priority can override all others.

Beneath them are the Curse Bindings received when advancing from silver to gold tier; then those from advancing to the silver tier, and advancing to bronze—that is, when first stepping onto the Transcendent path. Next down the line are Curse Bindings taken from others and, at the very bottom, are the ordinary, temporarily established Curse Bindings.

This is one of the main reasons why the Transcendent world today is divided into gold, silver, and bronze tiers.

When conflict occurs between high-priority Curse Bindings and low-priority ones, only the higher priority ones take effect. This is known as "the law of hierarchy among Curse Bindings."

For example, if a bronze-tier Curse Binding is "feeling no pain" and a silver-tier Curse Binding is "headaches after nightfall," then the silver-tier Curse Binding remains effective; on the contrary, if the "elimination of pain" Curse Binding was received at the silver tier, then you won’t have headaches after dark.

The second rule is that when high-priority and low-priority Curse Bindings both affect the same outcome, the negative effects are taken at the highest level, while positive effects stack.

For instance, two Curse Bindings of fire resistance -30% and -50% will not result in an 80% deduction in fire resistance, but 50%; however, positive effects like strength +5 and doubling of strength will be successively applied and stacked according to the order of their tiers.

In other words... if the Curse Bindings are chosen wisely, in theory, one could only bear a single most severe Curse Binding.

That is, by continuously choosing high-tier Curse Bindings of the same category to override lower-tier ones, preventing the emergence of multiple vulnerabilities and focusing on protecting one’s sole weakness; some Hunters also adopt this principle when collecting Curse Bindings.

Apart from these two schools, the rest are pretty much choosing blindly.

And Transcendents who choose blindly will sooner or later pay the price they deserve...

"...Speaking of which, would you like to be my Keeper of Secrets, Senior?"

"I wouldn’t mind."

Clarence casually asked, "But aren’t you going to find Teacher Benjamin? He seems to have become the Pope, which is much safer."

"And that little junior you met outside..."

"It’s all good, this time I specifically chose a covering Curse Binding, so it doesn’t matter even if I tell people randomly."

Salvatore had also resigned himself to take the second path.

Upon hearing this, the red-robed wizard Clarence was somewhat startled.

"...Your Curse Binding, it can cover?"

"A reverse cover, I guess. You’ll know when you hear it."

He spoke with a mixture of pride and helplessness, "My new curse is, ’I can’t sleep more than six hours a day.’ For every hour I sleep over that, my apparent age will decrease by one year, but my lifespan will not increase."

"...But you don’t seem to sleep more than six hours usually, right?"

Clarence fell silent for a long time, then asked with confusion, "And this curse... It might still be somewhat useful when you’re old, right? At least it can keep your body from aging too much."

"Assuming I really live long enough to grow old..."

Salvatore sighed gloomily, "I always feel like I’m about to die suddenly."

"Don’t talk nonsense; you are an alchemist. Sudden death isn’t going to happen," Clarence waved his hand, "If you think you’re going to die suddenly, just concoct a ’potion to prevent sudden death’ for yourself. I remember that alchemists can do that."

"Ah, indeed."

Salvatore nodded his head.

The profession of "alchemist" greatly weakens combat abilities. But for Salvatore, this problem was ordinary... his combat ability was poor to begin with.

A fighting strength of 2 reduced by 40% doesn’t go down to 1. That’s the logic.

The reason this profession weakens combat strength is that it completely makes "material-less transmutation" impossible; instead, materials are definitely needed to begin the transmutation.

"Alchemist" is the ancient version of the transformation wizard’s occupation, it greatly improves the efficiency of material transmutation. For example, he no longer needs to transform wood into iron, iron into electricity, electricity into fire, fire into red crystal, and red crystal into diamonds. He can now transmute wood directly into diamonds instantaneously.

But where he once could transform a wand-sized piece of wood into a five or six-meter high giant diamond wall, now he can only turn it into a wand-sized diamond.

The advantage, however, is that Salvatore can now perform "reverse transmutation."

That is, turning diamonds back into wood, or gold into brass.

This ability is virtually useless for combat.

But it does allow him to arbitrarily terminate reactions — reverting reactants back to their original state or instantly completing a catalyst, skipping the long reaction process.

If applied well, it could be seen as a kind of reversal of time.

That’s why there are few new transformations invented in modern times; it’s mostly built upon the optimization of ancient transformations.

Because contemporary transformation wizards have taken efficiency into account, discarding the small workshop production style, they have become flesh-and-blood assembly lines.

But Salvatore didn’t want to do that.

Perhaps at the beginning, he too wanted to learn transformation spells to make money...

However, after meeting Annan, he increasingly understood his own heart.

He might... simply enjoy transformation spells for their own sake.

As for combat and his own safety—

Salvatore believed that his friends would help him solve this problem.

His main task now was to study the "Philosopher’s Stone of the Hermes School."

And then, to complete the formula successfully... and to do it without relying on Miss Vatore’s power.