234 Chapter 180: Time Passes By

After Joshua had figured out everything he would need to know about setting up his guild he spent the rest of his vacation going about his own business and preparing for the next expedition. His group had gotten into a decent rhythm with each other when it came to training and when it came to going out on expeditions. They kept that rhythm over the next few months as they trained in mostly high level areas that they had either been to before and knew were good locations to level up or in new areas away from James Town that had interesting dungeons that no group had cleared yet. They didn't clear too many dungeons during the four months that passed by since it would level up their guild to fast and would make it so there first time defending James Town would be against mid-size guilds instead of the smaller ones.

During the four month period several things had happened that allowed their entire group to progress. In Lilly's case she was able to level up a lot during their many expeditions. She was able to reach level sixty-five during the time and her pets were all right there with her either being the same level or only a level below. Even pets such as Nibbles were leveled up although the little guy didn't evolve just yet. Both Cinder and Tank were powerful forces that seemed to only get stronger the more they trained and experienced battle.

Tank had grown in size some more as he gained levels and regained more of his strength. The turtle was well on his way to becoming the supernatural force that he used to be before being sealed away. He still had a ways to go, but it was clear that Tank would be able to regain all of his strength from the past as he leveled and in the future he would most likely even evolve into something greater. Cinder on the other hand had grown far more accustomed to her abilities and new strengths. During a fight with a rather powerful boss in one of the few new dungeons they had taken on during the four months, Cinder had nearly taken the creature down herself. Her abilities over ice were the creatures undoing as it slowed down the enemy's quick movements and made it so that it couldn't react in time to her blows. At that point they all knew how far along Cinder had come.

Since they didn't clear very many new dungeons during this period of time Lilly didn't get any new skills herself. In the end most of the dungeons gave the group some interesting blue prints or a material that they could hoard for their alliance. There was only one dungeon that they came across that ended up giving them some new skills and those skills went to four of her pets instead of herself.

When it came to Amy however the highly energetic girl had stayed just a level ahead of her older brother and Lilly, but it wasn't holding up very much at this point since the higher they got in level the closer the gap between them came. It took more experience with each level they gained to keep going forward so at some point the gap between their amounts of experience wouldn't be enough for there to be a level difference between them anymore. Just like with Lilly, Amy didn't really get many chances to gain any new skills since they were mostly going through already cleared dungeons or just training against high level creatures like the praying mantises. She did however gain one skill that would definitely come in handy in her upcoming fights.

The skill that Amy gained was the first skill that she had gotten as a martial artist that focused specifically on her feet. The skill was known as leg flurry and it was a skill that strengthened the strikes of each successful kick. If it was stopped early on it wouldn't be much more than a normal kick, but if it was allowed to continue in a long combo then by the time she had gotten to her fifth kick she'd be doing twice as much damage as normal and it would only continue from there. The ability was a god send for dealing with either distracted creatures that have their attention taken away by a tank, or enemies that are currently stunned for a period of time. It honestly didn't take long for Amy to build up on the kicks since the speed of her kicks were already fast do to her high dexterity.

For Adrian, Aito, and Henry the four month period was more than enough for all of them to break past level seventy like they had planned and they had actually all gotten all the way to level seventy-two. Of course this made it so they were more than ready to take on tougher challenges and put them into a position where they would be a great force in the upcoming large town clear. Outside of levels each of them had gain one important skill that would improve their fighting capabilities going forward.

When it came to Adrian the skill that he had gained involved a damage buff. Ever since he had gained the blessing from Tank's friend it was clear to everyone that his fighting skills had greatly improved. His reflexes seemed even more astounding and it had put Joshua on his back foot during the first time they had sparred after Adrian had gained the blessing. The precision of his blows made it so that he seemed to hit weak spots none stop even against fast moving opponents and it got the most out of Adrian's fighting style. It allowed him to flow his weak point strategy together with all of the little skills that slowly built up his damage output whenever he went into a string of combos.

The new skill only added to this style of combat. It was a skill known as precision and it would give a five percent boost to his damage dealt from a strike whenever he landed a clean and precise attack. This went perfectly with his combo style in the fact that whenever he hit a weak spot it was more than likely going to be considered a clean and precise attack. His swords would glow a bit whenever that would occur as a sign that he had in fact hit a precise strike. It became a normal sight to see Adrian's swords constantly glowing as he proceeded to glide around his opponents and attack all of their weak spots.

When it came to Aito the new skill that he had gained was rather simple, but extremely effective with his long range style of combat. It was a skill known simply as overcharge and it did exactly what its name sake meant. It would allow you to overcharge a shot even if it had other skills stacked up on it. So if Aito was using his rail bullet skill that empowered his shot quite a bit already and then combined it with overcharge and ricochet it would have so much power that one time when he did so with a sniper round against a praying mantis he was able to blow its head clean off. That had surprised everyone, but it did take him ten seconds to fully change the shot to that point and the distance made it easier for him as well with Henry's long range buffing ability.

Then for Henry he had gained a rather complex skill that could be used in all sorts of situations that matched up well with his type of fighting. For the most part Henry had allowed the rest of the group to do most of the fighting up to this point while he supported with buffs and holding enemies down from time to time, but now he could start to utilize all of the spells he had been picking up along the way. Originally the spells he learned were small and not nearly strong enough to do any serious damage to an enemy. He might be able to create a small flame, or strong breeze and other simple things along those lines but that wasn't anywhere close to what full time mages could do with their specialized spells.

This skill that Henry had gained was called synchronize and it allowed him combine small spells together to create a greater effect from them. It didn't work well with larger spells at its current level, but that could change as Henry leveled it. This skill was perfect for him since he loved figuring out ways to combine certain small spells together to create devastating effect. One of the simple ways they had seen Henry do this was with a small flame spell and a small wind spell. Henry was able to encase the flame in a ball of wind that would travel at a fast pace. He then also had a large amount of oxygen blocked off from the flames in the center of the entire spell construct. When the spell landed on an opponent the spell construct would synchronize and the oxygen would meet the flames causing a large burst on impact that would burn the opponents and knock them back do to the pressure of the wind. Henry spent a lot of time figuring out little ways to use this new skill.

Lastly Joshua had also improved during these four months. He had also reached level sixty- five like Lilly and his stats grew a lot during that time span. One of things he had improved at the most over that period of time was his control over his aura which allowed him to stay in the aura intensive state that he had been working on for up to an hour now. Of course this amount of time would shrink while being placed in constant combat, but it was still a large improvement. He planned on getting to the point where he could stay in such a state for as long as he was fighting no matter how long that was, but he was still a bit away from having that kind of control of that state.

Joshua also gained a new skill from one of the dungeons and it was a skill that he was extremely glad to have even if it wasn't something ground breaking. It was a shield bash skill that he could use with his scale blade during combat. The skill had two effects that greatly helped out during battle. The first was the fact that it would knock back his opponent and grant him a little space, but the more important part of the skill was the fact that it created more attention to himself from the opponent. It was somewhat like his heroic shout, but single targeted and with basically only a ten second cool down that would allow him to keep the attention of his opponents even when he didn't have heroic shout to use. It was called sword smash.

Joshua was able to weave this skill into his usual combat and could use it to either keep the enemies attention or to knock it back when one of his party members was about to launch a strong attack that he didn't want to get caught up in. It gave him more command of fights and would be helpful when he needed to disengage quickly to avoid trouble.

All in all the whole group had come a long way during the four month period and it had come time for them to take the next step in their preparations for taking on the large town. They planned take on the canyon with the last month worth of time they had and they planned on bringing some friends along as well so they could all get use to fighting together.