"I remember when Limitless Universe Skill was upgraded from LV.6 to LV.7, it only consumed 4.9 million soul points, but now it requires 6.3 million soul points to upgrade from LV.7 to LV.8, which is an increase of 1.4 million soul points."

Although the increase of 1.4 million soul points in upgrade requirements is definitely not much compared to other professional skills, it's indeed a lot for Zhang Yanhang at the moment. At least, he finds it a bit unaffordable.

"Judging from the current situation, if I upgrade again, the requirement might casually rise to tens of millions of soul points. Therefore, although there are indeed only three levels left to improve, it would still require at least twenty to thirty million soul points to fully upgrade."

This means that if Zhang Yanhang wants to fully upgrade in one go, he'll probably have to wait until the completion of the second stage of the clearing plan, which is after clearing the entire Gelijia City, to gather the necessary soul points.

"So, for now, let's first upgrade the Death Wave skill level."

Zhang Yanhang has long wanted to upgrade the Death Wave skill. It's just that the recent new professional skills are indeed quite powerful, otherwise, under normal circumstances, Death Wave would definitely be very high on the priority list, surely among the first to upgrade.

This time, due to the lesser degree of need before, there was no rush to upgrade, but now, after entering the Ashen World to clear monsters, the need has returned, so it's indeed necessary to upgrade.

"Moreover, although it has fallen from the top rank to now the fourth last, the value of Death Wave itself has definitely not decreased."

If it weren't for this, Zhang Yanhang certainly wouldn't always be thinking about upgrading the Death Wave skill level.

"Therefore, I choose option seven, upgrading the Death Wave skill from Original LV.MAX to Origin LV.5."

After a simple check of the skill list, Zhang Yanhang quickly made a choice, and at the same time, the time pause also ended.

......

November 1st, Sunday, Halloween, also the first day Zhang Yanhang entered the Ashen World. At 7:39 PM, Umbrella Biochemical Test Field, Terra City, Lucky Slot Machine.

After successfully upgrading the Death Wave skill by two levels from Original LV.MAX directly to Origin LV.6, Zhang Yanhang did not immediately check the skill effect of Death Wave but first opened his soul point balance to take a look.

[Soul points: 9,779,807 (-19,660,800)]

"Originally, I had 29.44 million soul points, and just now upgrading the Death Wave skill consumed 19.66 million soul points, leaving my soul point balance with only 9.77 million soul points, but thankfully, it's at least enough to upgrade a level of Limitless Universe Skill."

Of course, compared to soul points, Zhang Yanhang is more concerned about the Ash Source. He originally had four points of Legendary Essence and five points of Ash Source, but just now he consumed one point of each, so he now has three points of Legendary Essence and four points of Ash Source left.

"I currently have three skills left to improve besides Alchemy, which are Indestructible Golden Body, Gun Mastery, and Fighting Master. I just happen to have three points of Legendary Essence remaining, so fully upgrading them shouldn't be a problem.

However, the four points of Legendary Essence required for tier promotion will definitely have to be obtained from Lord Monsters."

From the current situation, Zhang Yanhang estimates that he might not need to wait three days to promote, but is quite possibly able to promote to the Fifth Tier just by clearing the Umbrella Biochemical Test Field, meaning he could promote to the Fifth Tier as soon as tomorrow.

After all, now that he has the dual-choice option, gathering ten points of Ash Source at once from an Ashen Treasure Box should definitely not be a difficult task.

Moreover, even if he can only get nine points of Ash Source like before, it's still no big deal, because he now has four points of Ash Source, and upgrading skills only requires three points, leaving him with an extra point to still gather ten points for tier promotion.

Therefore, Zhang Yanhang is very confident in his promotion to the Fifth Tier.

After checking the soul point balance, Zhang Yanhang quickly went on to view the skill effect of Death Wave·Origin LV.6.

[Death Wave·Origin LV.6 (Passive/Active)]

[Passive Effect: Weakens enemy's defensive power by 24% (+4%).]

[Active Effect: After skill activation, deals 600 (+100) + 12 (+2) × 100[Intelligence] + 12 (+2) × 100[Charm] = 3000 points (+500 points) of fixed damage to everyone within the coverage area.

Coverage area 1200 (+200) × 160% (+40%) = 1920 meters (+720 meters), can only cause damage to the same target once within 6 hours (-6 hours). No cooldown, moderate physical strength consumption.]

[Additional Attribute: Skillful—you can now skillfully control the Death Wave skill, gaining the ability to mark friendly targets, which will be immune to the fixed damage from the Death Wave skill.]

[Additional Attribute: Mastery—you now have become relatively proficient in controlling the Death Wave skill, gaining the ability to freely manipulate the coverage area of the Death Wave skill (only downward adjustments allowed), reducing physical strength consumption as the coverage area shrinks.]

[Additional Attribute: Specialization—after long efforts, you now have notable specialization in controlling the Death Wave skill, gaining the ability to forcibly kill enemies with Life Value below 10% who have been attacked by the Death Wave skill without extra physical strength consumption required for the forced kill.]

[Additional Attribute: Expert—After a long period of effort, you have now mastered the Death Wave Skill to the expert level. Your long-term research has increased the intensity of your Death Wave, boosting the forced kill Life Value Limit by 10% and expanding its coverage by 20%.]

[Additional Attribute: Master—After a very long period of effort, you have now mastered the Death Wave Skill to the master level. Long-term research has given you a further understanding of the Death Wave Skill, increasing the forced kill Life Value Limit by 10% and expanding its coverage by 40%.

At the same time, through prolonged use of the Death Wave Skill, you have incidentally understood part of the principles of 'Life Drain'. When you use the Death Wave Skill to attack enemies, you can draw some 'Life Energy' from them to restore a small amount of your own Physical Strength.]

"Wow, now the Skill Effect of the Death Wave is increasingly lengthening as it gradually improves."

Seeing the much larger text box in front of him, Zhang Yanhang even had the illusion that the Additional Attributes were actually the main body.

"After the Death Wave Skill was promoted to Origin LV.6, the bonus effect provided by the previous Passive effect to weaken enemy defensive power by 20% increased by 4% to a total weakening of 24% of enemy defensive power, almost equivalent to weakening a quarter of the enemy's defense."

In this way, it is equivalent to the enemy becoming a quarter weaker in front of him before doing anything, which is a very good Passive effect in terms of output.

"Besides this 24% defense weakening, I actually also have a 43.8% Armor Penetration Effect, which allows me to ignore defense. The overall effect it produces is almost the same as weakening the enemy's defense, so if the two are combined, that totals 67.8%.

In other words, no matter what enemy I attack, I can directly ignore two-thirds of their defense and let them use only the remaining one-third to resist the full damage I deal, which is really good."

Zhang Yanhang has always wanted to stack this ability to 100%, so that he can directly ignore defense against any enemy, but for now, that might indeed be a bit difficult since he currently hasn't encountered any other Equipment that adds to Armor Penetration Effect besides the Crimson Iron Hell Finger.

And the Crimson Iron Hell Finger has basically reached its limit, so for now, he'll have to think of a way to resolve this in the future.

"By the way, I wonder if there's any possibility of acquiring Equipment with Armor Penetration Effect at the Umbrella Biochemical Test Field?"

Zhang Yanhang thought it over and felt there might still be a chance, as the Tyrants here are indeed quite adept at Armor Penetration Damage. For example, the ancestral Death Claw ability—when he has that kind of defense-ignoring capability himself, he feels quite happy, but if the enemy has it, it's truly annoying.

"Aside from the growth of Passive effects, more importantly, the active effect has also increased. This time, with the Skill Level being promoted to Origin LV.6, the base Fixed Damage provided by the Death Wave has increased by another 100 points, from the original 500 points to 600 points.

Moreover, the Intelligence Conversion Coefficient and the Charm Conversion Coefficient for Fixed Damage each increased by two points, from the original ten points to twelve points. As a result, with my Fourth Tier Rank Limit of 100 points of Intelligence and Charm attributes, it is equivalent to an extra 200 points of Fixed Damage in terms of Intelligence and Charm.

Adding up Intelligence and Charm, a total of 400 points of Fixed Damage increase, combined with the base 100 points of Fixed Damage increase, in total, it boosts my Death Wave Skill's Fixed Damage by 500 points, elevating it from the original 2500 points to 3000 points.

However, even the weakest Fourth Tier Monsters have a Life Value Limit of 3375 points, so if only calculating Fixed Damage, it obviously is still not enough."

Zhang Yanhang sometimes wonders why the Conversion Coefficient of the Death Wave can only increase with upgrades. If it could be maxed out directly upon promotion, like with Seeking Fortune and Avoiding Evil, that would be great. If it were that straightforward, he would have no worries about insufficient damage, but unfortunately, that's not the case.

"But fortunately, this time the Additional Attributes have once again increased the execution limit by 10%. This way, the total execution limit has increased from the original 20% to 30%. This means, if I can ensure that this 3000 points of Fixed Damage reduces the enemy's Life Value by over 70%, I can still perform an instant kill."

Zhang Yanhang calculated carefully. Originally with 2500 points of Fixed Damage and a 20% execution limit, he could only kill monsters with Life Value of 3125 points or less, which was exactly 250 points short of the lowest Life Value Limit of 3375 points of Fourth Tier Monsters. Therefore, his Death Wave was useless against Fourth Tier Monsters at that time.

But now it's different. He now has 3000 points of Fixed Damage and a 30% execution limit, meaning he can now instant-kill monsters with Life Value under 4286 points, which far exceeds the minimum Life Value Limit of 3375 points for Fourth Tier Monsters.

"The maximum Life Value Limit Conversion Coefficient for a Fourth Tier Monster is 45 points, and 4286 divided by 45 has already reached 95 points, which is the threshold that only Fourth Tier Four Star Monsters can reach, belonging to the peak level of the Fourth Tier.

Therefore, I have now been promoted from previously being unable to handle even the weakest Fourth Tier Monsters to being able to directly instant-kill even the strongest Fourth Tier Monsters.

Upgrading Skills is truly beneficial. If I were to take shortcuts to get some Fixed Damage boosts, who knows when I would be able to acquire them. But with Skill upgrading, just casually leveling it up twice has already resolved all issues."

Moreover, it is worth noting that, according to Zhang Yanhang's past experience, 95 points of Constitution Attribute is already the highest Attribute value a Fourth Tier Four Star Monster can reach, not the minimum.

Under normal circumstances, the Constitution Attribute of a Fourth Tier Four Star Monster should fall between 91-95, so unless Zhang Yanhang encounters a 'Five-star Monster' he's never seen or heard of, or some absurd Fourth Tier Four Star Elite Monster, theoretically, Zhang Yanhang's Death Wave can now instantly kill all Fourth Tier Monsters.

"Compared to Fixed Damage, the coverage range of the Death Wave is equally important because regardless of high damage, if I can't hit the target, it's useless.

The initial coverage range of my Death Wave was only 1000 meters, and now it has increased by 200 meters to 1200 meters with the Skill Level improvement."

In addition to that, Zhang Yanhang noticed that the Additional Attributes with Death Wave Origin LV.6 have added another 40% range bonus this time. Previously, Original LV.MAX had already added a 20% range bonus, so Zhang Yanhang now has a total coverage range conversion coefficient of 160%.

Thanks to this, the initial coverage range of Zhang Yanhang, which was only 1200 meters, has now been enhanced to 1920 meters after the bonus, which is a total increase of 720 meters compared to before.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.