Having consumed the myriad skills tome and the endless treasury tokens, Ronan was eager to see what he would receive. The tome was the first to open, its animation slightly shorter than that of the tokens.

When he saw the skill he received he felt both elated and disappointed. Elated because it was one of the stat-boosting skills—namely limitless luck—but disappointed because it was one he already had.

[Limitless Luck (Common)] has evolved into [Limitless Luck (Rare)]!

Limitless Luck (Rare): Gain +1 to luck for every 7 points of luck you possess. Does not include stat bonuses.

Admittedly, upgrading it from common to rare would be a great boon, providing him with far more free luck points, but he was hoping to collect more of the stat-boosting skills than the ones he already possessed. No matter their rarity, the moment he had all of them in his collection he would be able to alloy them into a single skill that would hopefully boost every single one of his stats.

As he was thinking about that eventuality, the two endless treasury tokens popped and he received his items. One was a fruit, and the other was a crimson cloak that was delightfully soft.

The fruit was an infused kiwi of quickness, giving him another eleven points in agility. That was a great boost, considering how many base points he'd lost from consuming minerals. That then reminded him he needed to keep an eye out for anything suitable for absorption with mineral skeleton.

As for the item, it was called 'Axel's Billowing Justice.' A rather cringeworthy name in Ronan's opinion, but the boosts it gave were nothing to laugh at. Plus five in both strength and agility, along with a twenty percent boost to fire resistance.

That was one resistance he hadn't yet obtained through his ring-bound skill, but it didn't take many leaps of the imagination to guess that there would be resistances for all forms of elemental damage. He was simply loath to burn himself to death unless he really had to, or it happened as a byproduct of him pushing forwards in the integration.

The way it trailed behind him was annoying. It might snag on something during a battle, giving his opponents a way to knock him off balance. Still, that wasn't enough of a downside to make him take it off. The goblins weren't that smart. Yet.

With all of his items used and his stats invested, there was nothing keeping Ronan in place. He stood up and stretched, then began to walk in the direction of the goblin outpost that stage 3 consisted of.

He leapt up to the trunk of the tree, his feet slamming into the bark and sending a gentle tremor up his legs. As soon as his knees were fully bent, he pushed off, launching himself towards the next goblin.

The warrior was utterly unprepared for his sudden attack. Jumping off a tree trunk was something none of the goblins were capable of. Even Ronan hadn't known he could do it until he tried, but with his absurd stats he was getting more creative with his movement.

The human body was incredibly adaptive, especially with the system's power. While the race upgrade seemingly only increased the stats he gained with every level up, he could feel there was something deeper that had changed. His physiology and genetic makeup were no longer the same, though he was certainly still human.

His spear pierced right through the elite warrior's chest, shoving it to the ground and pinning it there as Ronan fell onto it. Twisting and pulling out the spear, he watched as the life drained from its eyes.

Looking around, he could only see two more goblins. He couldn't quite remember how many there'd been the last time around. The battle was too chaotic for that level of detailed memory to form. However, he didn't particularly care if one escaped. He planned to wipe out the entire village this time—one more goblin reinforcing them wouldn't make a difference.

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Once he'd killed all the goblins in the area, Ronan received a twin chime, surprising him. None of the little green bastards had escaped this time around. He didn't know whether that was because he had improved or simply due to the different order he'd killed them in.

Congratulations, you have cleared Stage 3 of the tutorial!

+2 Bronze Credits

+837 Copper Credits

You will be awarded your personal trait based on all your accomplished merit thus far!

&£@#$!+.

Stage 4 begins now!

Knowing what the reward would be, as they didn't differ between tutorial difficulties with the exception of the rarity increasing, Ronan was prepared for his heritage to intercede.

That didn't make the eldritch screeches less agonising to listen to. However, he would listen to it a hundred thousand times if need be, knowing that once he'd repeated this tutorial difficulty enough it might lead to his personal trait evolving to a greater rarity once more. Or some other reward his heritage felt like giving out.

Once the noise cut out, he checked out the kill notifications from the previous stage, excited to see what level he'd made it to.

With the toughest goblin being the elite warrior at level 27, he had been expecting to end up somewhere similar. However, thanks to his massively increased experience multipliers Ronan ended up shooting past his defeated foes. He'd hit level 31.

He invested all of the free stat points he earned following his previously decided distribution, quivering at the rush of power that flooded his body. All of his resources had huge pools now. Nothing short of a maxed-out surging strikes would be able to drain his stamina and mana.

The goblins had also dropped a small collection of weaponry. While he preferred to use conjure weapon most of the time, having a variety of weapons to draw on allowed him to fight at maximum effectiveness all of the time. The conjured weapons were slightly sturdier than those the goblins dropped, but sometimes he wanted the range of a spear or the brutal blunt force of a hammer or mace.

Every time he conjured a weapon he paid close attention to how the mana flowed through him and formed the construct. He wanted to replicate the effect through sorcery and build upon it. His hope was that once he accomplished that, he might be able to push his limits and conjure any kind of weapon, armour, or even other types of mana construct. That was a pipe dream for now, though, and so he was limited to weapons smaller than a shortsword, or whatever he had stored in his inventory.

Killing the few elites meant he'd also acquired a handful of body-aspected shards. Before he sought out the goblin village, Ronan wanted to use them all. There was no point keeping them in his inventory and letting them go to waste as he'd foolishly done in the previous iteration with so many shards and the common skill upgrade shards. Losing out on a chance to upgrade one of his common skills hurt the most, and he vowed to never again repeat that mistake.

When he started cultivating, Ronan had begun doing it the same way as the first time he'd done with the Diamondback Gorilla Tempered Body Art. However, as he began those simple movements and tried to absorb the shard's energy, he found he wasn't able to draw even a single drop out of the rough crystal in his hands.

He'd stopped, perplexed, then attempted to figure out the problem.

It took a few guesses, but he had eventually realised what was preventing him from cultivating. After breaking through the first threshold, it was clear that simple movements weren't quite enough.

Even though the art itself hailed repetition as the path to true strength, working on slightly better forms and techniques was clearly required to go beyond the sixth realm of tempered body cultivation. Thus, Ronan had needed to scour his memory for all the martial arts, calisthenics, and other random exercise routines and knowledge he had.

After some trial and error he found that movements which involved the entire body allowed him to absorb the shard's energy most effectively. He figured out a series of movements that he could repeat for as long as his stamina kept up and began to cultivate.

Thankfully, while the complexity of the movements had increased, the number of repetitions required to fully absorb a shard had been reset. Not only that, but the boost to the energy received once the movement was completed had increased.

Despite that, the low level of the shards meant he wasn't able to make a huge amount of progress. He ended up reaching around eleven percent of the way towards the seventh realm of tempered body cultivation, as well as pushing his proficiency in the Diamondback Gorilla Art to around thirty percent.

Having finished his cultivation, Ronan was ready to head to the goblin village. It was time to see just how many of the little green bastards were hiding inside. This time around, he planned to kill them all and claim whatever rewards were waiting on the other side.

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