Chapter Fifty-Two: Part-Time Job
2014-11-28
Author: Zhuseng Floating Tower
The strength of goblins is not to be underestimated. Although they appear to be only about three feet tall, an advanced goblin warrior possesses significant strength, which may be due to their slight draconic bloodline. The strength of an advanced goblin warrior can reach 13-15 points; if Soren weren’t wearing armor, a single hit would likely break a bone.
He wasn’t in a hurry to collect the loot; Soren first wrapped up his legs.
He still had some healing potions, but he didn’t use any, as it would cost 60 silver to buy a low-level healing potion that restores about 8-10 hit points. There was no need to expend resources here. He had just gained a regeneration talent worth 20 points from his extraordinary constitution and, after some simple bandaging, he began to recover gradually. By tomorrow, he should be fine.
After all, he hadn’t sustained any serious injuries.
“Regeneration: Your resilient physique exceeds that of ordinary humans. Once-fatal wounds might only be severe injuries for you now. Your powerful vitality allows you to regenerate like a troll. Any wounds classified as serious or less can gradually heal over time. Though you may not regenerate a severed limb like a troll, one day, as your constitution increases, you will be able to do so.” This was the most basic regeneration ability.
The regeneration restores hit points calculated on an hourly basis, meaning Soren could restore 1 hit point per hour.
He was currently a level 6 thief with 63 hit points. If he hadn’t lost any limbs and was only suffering from bleeding or tearing damage, he could fully recover in three days, even if he merely had a breath left. Don’t underestimate such ability; while it may not influence your recovery during combat, it determines how quickly you can recover after battle.
Many melee professionals rely on this regeneration ability, which has saved their lives countless times until reaching the legendary domain.
As for trolls, their base constitution starts at 25 points.
If their regeneration ability isn’t restrained, even decapitating them wouldn’t stop their regeneration; these creatures are on the level of biochemical beasts.
In this world, consuming a potion to instantly revive to full state is impossible.
Even a priest’s divine technique cannot accomplish this!
Many divine techniques deplete energy when cast, leaving the caster in a weakened state for a time.
As for resurrection?
You’re wishful thinking. That’s a ninth-level divine technique. You’d better ask the God of Death on the River of Underworld if he’ll agree to resurrect you! Otherwise, so many people wouldn’t have fallen on the path to becoming legends. If a team had a priest, dying would simply mean using a resurrection spell—a very simple matter.
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Soren just counted; he gained about 900 points of killing experience from this battle, with ordinary goblins granting around 15 points each, and goblin warriors about 50 points. Finally, the dark red goblin sorcerer rewarded him with nearly 300 points of killing experience.
It proved that the heads of spellcasters are worth a lot!
After resting a bit, he started allocating his skill points. He first spent 7 points to raise Stealth to 110 points and then added the remaining potential points to Knowledge. During this time, he had increased his Knowledge to 8 points, now at exactly 25 points, meeting the minimum requirement for being a part-time wizard.
Soren didn’t have many professions he could work part-time.
To be a part-time warrior, his strength was slightly lacking. For part-time priest, his perception was insufficient; once the years of turmoil began, he would become utterly useless and couldn’t cast divine techniques at all. As for being a part-time sorcerer, there’s the question of whether he had the talent, and his Charm of 16 was indeed a bit low. The only part-time profession that could yield decent strength was probably wizard.
Whether advancing or part-time, it’s not something one can just close their eyes and do. Part-time warriors have strength requirements, part-time priests have faith and perception requirements, and wizards also require 25 points in Knowledge and over 15 in Intelligence. If he had a base profession of scholar, he could advance to wizard without any issues. But now, having come from a civilian background, he needed to improve his Knowledge skill.
Being a part-time wizard was a direction.
Soren had some inner turmoil, as being a part-time wizard would require an additional 50% of killing experience due to his lower profession level.
If he had plenty of killing experience, he wouldn’t care about such things.
Unfortunately, it was very difficult to obtain killing experience. After killing so many goblins, he only got 900 points, which wasn’t enough to cover the soul energy cost of a part-time position. Advancing to a special profession requires around 5000 points of soul energy, enough for him to directly level up to a level 7 thief, while part-time would require 2500 points of soul energy, equivalent to the experience needed to level up half a level.
If he weren’t aware of the power of spells, he might not consider becoming a part-time wizard.
He really did not intend to do so.
Because learning random professions would only lead to the conclusion of being neither scholarly nor martial.
For instance, at his previous profession level, he had ‘Level 10 Civilian/Level 10 Thief/Level 10 Stealth Assassin.’ The Stealth Assassin was an advanced class of the Thief and shouldn’t count as another part-time. To reach this strength, he accumulated about 2 million points of killing experience, then directly awakened the ‘Shadow Plane’ legendary ability after finally reaching the legendary domain.
But if he had part-time other professions, that 2 million points of killing experience might only be enough to raise the two professions’ levels to about 14 on average. A level 14 warrior couldn’t withstand ten blows from him, and a level 14 wizard might not even have time to cast a spell before being eliminated by his ‘Shadow Step.’
It’s actually hard to say whether specializing is better than being part-time.
Part-time abilities can handle various emergency situations, navigating any environment with ease, enhancing complementarity of various abilities, and even gaining three to five additional free attribute points, but unfortunately, mastering legendary abilities takes longer. Although one can acquire some through profession ability fusion, it’s ultimately not comparable to specialization.
Many former part-timers pursued additional attribute points, sacrificing many powerful legendary specializations for that!
For example, the legendary thief’s ‘Shadow Domain’ is an incredibly powerful stealth specialization, plus the ability to teleport directly into the shadow realm, among others. If one opts for part-time, these abilities are difficult to gain in a short time unless they defeat a god or two to obtain a massive amount of soul energy.
Specialists must rely on teammates since some combat situations cannot be resolved alone, but the advantage is that they can quickly gain legendary domain capabilities since they do not have to split focus learning skills from other professions. Profession level is just part of strength; many professions require mastering many special specialties. As for the final achievements, it’s indeed hard to evaluate because not many can reach the legendary domain, let alone maximize both approaches.
Part-timers in the legendary domain can adapt to a variety of complex environments.
Single-profession legendary characters develop a particular aspect to the extreme, such as a wizard with a profession level around 40, who can have so many spell slots that they could destroy an entire continental shelf.
Therefore, most who choose part-time jobs merely use abilities from other professions to assist their main profession; for example, many thieves will become part-time warriors to enhance their melee capabilities.
Part-time professions are extremely time-consuming.
If Soren successfully becomes a part-time wizard, he would have to invest a significant amount of killing experience into it while also training to master numerous wizard specialties, resulting in tremendous energy expenditure! He must at least train three or more casting specialties to reach the level of other wizards of the same grade, during which his thief power would hardly increase.
Relying solely on a wizard level without specialties to assist would result in completely failing to demonstrate the expected effect in battle.
Because casting a low-level spell is less effective than simply attacking with a sword.
The greatest benefit of part-time work lies in adaptability and the combined use of various abilities, such as combining the ‘Greater Invisibility Spell’ with ‘Backstab’, which justifies the reason to go part-time. Otherwise, if the professions cannot complement each other, the result would be an unworthy exchange, wasting one’s time while simultaneously limiting their own achievements. After all, very few can attain divinity; the energy that a soul can bear has its limits.
Not to mention how challenging it is to gain killing experience!
In order to obtain those roughly 2 million points of killing experience, Soren had to slay more than half a hand’s worth of dragons and liches combined.
Of course, at that time, the killing experience was distributed among the entire team; now he had to bear all the killing experience alone.
In fact, if killing experience weren’t so difficult to acquire, so many wouldn’t have fallen on their path to entering legend. One could say, in Soren’s memory, aside from a few lucky ones who managed to kill fallen deities or directly obtained fragments of divinity, others who made it to the legendary domain endured countless hardships. The journey was a treacherous path filled with blood and tears.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the numerous hardships endured that those who reached the legendary domain are all experts, and their challenge levels are on par with those of the narrative’s native wizards.
To kill them is as difficult as besieging a legendary wizard’s tower!
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