Chapter 18: Testing Capabilities
Within the ins near the Town of parm, Shinto walked on the pathway headed for the forest, where the hunting grounds are at.
As he walked over towards the forest, Shinto pulled up his status window as he pondered on how to go about his stats progression.
''Hmm... With my ss attributes, it would mean my ss would be niche in different situations, with nightfall being for support and daybreak being for damage?'' Shinto thought to himself as his eyes locked onto his ss attributes.
-ss Attribute-
*You are a diviner between light and shadow, thus you will receive certain ss bonuses when in different environments.
-During the night or in darkness, you will gain a boost to your vision and your stats rting to mobility and support will be increased by 25%.
-During the day or within light, you will gain a boost to defense and your stats rting tobat and defense will be increased by 25%
*As a diviner between light and shadow, abnormal status conditions do not work well on you.
''25% increase to stats for mobility and support during the night and the same increase forbat and defense during the day...''
''Does this count towards my unique stats too?'' Shinto pondered, as he opened up his skill list, ''Well firstly, I need to check out the skills again to see which stats are more suitable for it.''
While his status window is opened, Shinto opened up his skill window showing a list of five abilities on it. Shinto scrutinized on the top two skills on the list.
[ Shadow Fields Lv 1 ] [ 20 Shadow Gauge ] [ Cooldown: 10 Minutes ]
*Creates a field of shadows around you for 30 seconds.
*Enemies within this field will be inflicted by blindness and have their stats decreased by 5% (Stackable with any other ability).
*Ally''s within this field will gain a stat boost of 5% (Stackable with any other ability) as well as have their vision enhanced.
*When you are in this field, you will be able to regenerate 1 shadow gauge point for every 5 seconds.
...
[ Divinity Point Lv 1 ] [ 25 Divinity Gauge ] [ Cooldown: 5 Minutes ]
*Shoots a ray of light onto an enemy, quickly dealing 250% magic damage.
*When sessfully dealing damage with this skill, absorbs one-third of damage dealt into HP.
''Hmm... So basically; My skills don''t consume any MP at all and instead use a new resource as stated by the passive, Divining Gauge...'' Shinto thought to himself as he looked towards his stats, ''Which would mean putting my stats into intelligence would rather be useless when ites to needing MP, but...''
Shinto nced back over towards the description of Divinity Point, ''But if I don''t invest some stat points into intelligence, I would most likely deal little to no damage at all, which would make my light skills rather useless...''
Shinto had two light skills and three shadow skills. From the information he had gotten from those five skills, it seemed it was just like his ss attributes stated, shadow skills were supportive while divinity skills were offensive. If Shinto wanted to use these skills appropriately he would need to bnce his stats on his four main stats, especially stamina, intelligence and agility.
''And with Shadow Fields, it seems if I want the status boost for night, I can activate shadow fields in daylight.'' Shinto averted his gaze away from Divinity Point as he analyzed the description of Shadow Fields.
''A field-ability thatst for 30 seconds... And to add onto that, it''s a buff and a debuff skill at the same time.'' Shinto scrutinized the details as he read it word for word, ''And... I can regenerate one shadow gauge for every 5 seconds...''
Reading thest few words, Shinto raised his eyebrows, ''Speaking of regeneration... Does the gauge points regenerate like with MP, or... Does it require me to be in a certain environment in order to start regenerating...''
There wasn''t any sort of information about the natural regeneration of his new resources, thus Shinto was left there to ponder about it.
''Well, with 30 starting shadow and divinity points, I can use at most one skill from each side.''
After thinking about it for a while, Shinto nced over to his stats on his status window, ''So, with the skills I have right now and the state I''m in... I think focusing on damage would be more important than survivability and mobility at the moment taking into ount that I have no one to support too...''
Deciding on it, Shinto stared at the ''(+) symbol'' beside his stats as he ordered the system, "Put 5 stat points into intelligence, 3 into agility and 2 into stamina.''
Saying the order, a system prompt pop up asking if he was sure he wanted to add the points into the stats, quickly Shinto decisively selected yes after doing so, his status window updated.
Satisfied with the updated status window, Shinto nced over towards the forest in the distance. "Well then, now with my stat points out of the way, let''s start testing this ss."
...
Within the forest of Parm, Shinto swiftly rushes up towards a few wolves scattered around in the area as he used a basic attack, unleashing a mana spark from his staff to get the attention of one of them.
"Grrr!" Being hit by the attack, the wolf turned towards Shinto quickly staring at him with bloodshot eyes. In the next instance, the wolf gave off a loud howl as it pounced towards Shinto.
Quickly as the wolf pounced towards him, Shinto jumped backwards maintaining the distance between them as he continued to use basic attacks on the wolf.
He was kiting. A basic tactic in which one would continuously maintain distance from the enemies as they attacked, this typically applies to ranged attackers to prevent the monster from approaching and attacking them.
[ You have dealt 8 damage! ]
[ You have dealt 8 damage! ]
As the wolf profusely tried to close the distance between the two, Shinto slowly wilted down the wolf''s HP.
''Now then... This should be a good time to use a skill.'' Shinto thought to himself as he activated [Divinity Point], quickly protruding a white point of light towards the wolf.
[ You have dealt 19 damage! ]
''Hmm... not bad for being at level one with only six intelligence and one wisdom.'' Shinto continued to attack as he ends the wolf.
[ You have defeated Night Wolf! ]
[ Your level has risen to level 2! ]
[ You have obtained 10 stat points. ]
"Alright..." Confirming the defeat of the wolf, Shinto nced over towards his divinity gauge as he sees it slowly regenerating, "From the looks of it, it seems the divinity gauge regenerates for about one point every ten seconds."
"That''s such a slow regeneration... Does it work the same for shadow gauge as well?" Shinto looked at the gauge above divinity, ''Shadow''.
"I would need to find a teammate to properly utilize the shadow skills... But," Shinto looked around in the forest, "Since I have a hidden ss... I would need to find trustable people so that they won''t spread any info about it..."
In Spiritual Warriors, information was power. Not everything in-game has been discovered yet. Skills, passives, the world view and the like, there was so much content in-game that many yers believed it was endless.
Some experts theorized that only 6% of the game has been yed through from the game''sunch a year ago, with 94% left untouched. But that 6% was only public info. Who knew just how much information each veteran has that they didn''t reveal to the yer base?
Thinking about this issue, Shinto sighed to himself, "Sigh... I can''t go asking my guild members since they''ll most likely barrage me with questions that I just can''t be bothered to answer... And the newbies, they might jump onto the forums and talk about me... And thus creating a butterfly effect where the veterans will hunt me down..."
"With a support ss, solo-y is definitely a no in long term..."
At his current state, he could solo beginner monsters and possibly beginner''s dungeon with skill and movements alone. He could use all sorts of tactics in order to sessfully defeat these monsters. But what about future contents that he definitely can''t solo?
He didn''t think too deeply into this matter while deciding on this ss, he was too used to ying solo that he forgot about teamwork, he had mostly soloed through content, yed against the many in Crystality. The only times he would work together with his team was when he was raiding a stupidly hard boss with annoying gimmicks but, that was rare since he didn''t tackle any new content.
He didn''t know much about teamwork since he was a solo yer, though he may care about his guildmates, he just wasn''t used to coordinating with them since he rarely does so, the only exception to this was the core members, since he teamed up with them for Crystality, but that''s only to an extent of receiving support and intercepting when needed to help his teammates out of a pickle.
"Damn... Did I really made a mistake?" Shinto shook his head ridding the thought away from his mind, "Well, I did ask for it when I went ahead and switched to support..."
Shinto sighed.
His guild members couldn''t be counted on. Not because they weren''t trustable, but because Shinto didn''t want to bother them, especially with him being at this state and that he didn''t want to be a burden to them, especially to the core members of the guild.
Shinto was stuck in thought for a long while, pondering on this matter.
"Sigh... Was it always hard to try to get out of solo?"
...
As he sighed to himself, he suddenly heard a loud voice rushing towards him.
"EEEK! OUT OF THE WAY, OUT OF THE WAY!!!"
"...?"