Chapter 465: Finding a Broken Skill at the Auction House

The moment Joshua had entered the auction house things quieted down quite a bit. Although there were still several people inside the place it wasn't nearly as rowdy as it had been outside near the bulletin boards. The people inside of the auction house were mostly the same people that came their regularly making transactions for their guilds so they were often too focused on the task at hand to make a ruckus. Every now and then you would get some stuck up entitled person that would try to make a scene, but the system regulations were there to stop anything from going too far and the chance of getting banned from the auction house was too much of a risk for anyone to actually cause any problems there.

Joshua went to the front desk and ordered a room for himself to look through both the local and worldwide auctions to see if he could find anything useful. The room wasn't anything special since he was there by himself, but it was soundproof so he didn't have to worry about getting interrupted while he searched through all of the different auction items that were up for grabs.

The first thing Joshua took notice of while combing through the different auction items was the fact that there were tons of spells everywhere he looked. Hell spells were so common place in the auction house that they outnumbered skills about five to one. It wasn't too surprising to Joshua since even when he explored dungeons it was far easier to find a spell in a treasure chest than an ability unless it was a treasure chest gained after a sub-boss. This meant that the auction house just matched up with what the explorers would be finding in the field, so it wasn't much of a surprise.

It was also pretty obvious why people were more willing to auction off spells than skills. The most obvious reason was that spells weren't as job defining or as growth oriented as skills. While skills could level up and become stronger along with getting more useful as the user grows in strength spells could only do the latter option. Spells didn't level up and there strength was completely determined by the strength of the user and how much mana is put into the spell. Of course there were more powerful spells out there, but even those don't level up like skills can.

Another reason why spells were so abundant in the auction house was because some spells needed specific types of mages to even use them. Although most spells that could be used by tier one job holders were often usable by most mages, the more powerful spells were often more useful to those that had a certain affinity with a particular element. Based off of what Joshua had learned from Ysildea in the past he was fairly certain that would only become more prevalent once people started getting to tier two jobs where they would become even more specialized in specific elements or types of magic.

For the most part Joshua ignored the spells he saw being put up for auction, but he did keep them in mind just in case he came across any mages in the tournament that would use that particular spell. He didn't want to be caught by surprise when he had the perfect opportunity to read all about the spells descriptions right now. He wasn't going to buy them, but he was happy to have the opportunity to learn about them. Maybe in the future he'd be able to mimic their effects with his aura, but there was a long way to go before he would become that proficient with aura after all. Joshua didn't have much mana, but his intelligence and wisdom stats were still decent and empowered his aura in the same way that they would empower other people's magic. So he wouldn't be surprised if once he got more proficient with his aura he'd be able to mimic some of the capabilities of magic if he tried hard enough.

Once Joshua had skipped over several spells that were useless to him he started seeing several skills that seemed to be quite interesting. Joshua had already used the system to filter out any skills that had lower base values. This meant he wouldn't see any skills that were a lower tier of their own kind. If a flash step skill appeared in his feed on the auction it would be the best version of the flash step skill and not a lower tiered one that could only travel a short distance with a longer cool down. So Joshua didn't need to worry about getting a crappy version of a good skill and started looking for something that fit what he wanted.

The first skill that caused Joshua to pause and look over it was a long range skill that made Joshua rethink his first idea of focusing on his strengths. It was a long range skill, but not in the usual sense. The skill allowed you to leap far distances while being surrounded in energy whether the energy was aura or mana. The aura would gather up over the distance that you traveled and the blow on landing would unleash all of that energy directly forward. The skill was interesting but there were a few things about it that kept Joshua from immediately bidding on it.

The skill was similar to one that berserkers got naturally from their job class. Though it wasn't quite as good. With this skill it depended on aura and mana to direct a powerful blow forward, but the draw back was rather obvious in the fact that the attack would be directed completely forward, and an enemy could easily guess where you would land mid leap. This would make the attack easy to avoid when fighting other humans, or humanoid creatures. It was still a decent skill, but wouldn't be all that useful during the tournament.

The version that berserkers used generates energy in a different way. Instead of using just aura or mana it gained strength from the user's rage which was something that all berserkers used while fighting. The greater amount of rage they built up in battle the more powerful their attacks would become. Of course the drawback to this was the issue of berserkers often going berserk in combat and losing their senses. They wouldn't start attacking their party members, but they'd lose themselves in battle and rampage if they let their rage build up to much. This ability allowed them to burn off that rage energy in one skill. Instead of landing and projecting the force of their rage forward it would be unleashed in a large wave around the spot they landed often creating craters and clearing out the area.

The berserker's version of the skill was much better since even if the attack was avoided it was impossible to attack the berserker at the same time with the large area effect of the skill. In the end Joshua decided to pass on the skill since his blink already let him get in close. He might bid for it later, but it wasn't something that he wanted as one of his main fighting abilities. The next skill that Joshua found was a large energy blade created around your weapon. The size of the attack would change based on the weapon you used and the attack could grow to several feet high into the air.

This skill was definitely one that Joshua was somewhat interested in, but it wasn't one that he was intrigued by for the tournament. Joshua could already surround his scale blade with aura to attack with, but this skill would increase the size of the attack greatly and allow Joshua to cleave through large beast which was something he was finding harder and harder to do of late. Against another person the skill would be incredibly useless unless they were trapped and couldn't move. The skill took far too long to charge up which would leave Joshua open for an attack, and it would also be to glaring and easy to avoid when used against quick smaller enemies. As a tank Joshua wouldn't have much time to do such things especially in one on one fights so he passed it over while marking it to see how expensive it would get.

For a while Joshua couldn't seem to find anything that met the requirements of what he was looking for and it seemed like he was waiting there for hours to see if something interesting would be put up for auction. While waiting around he ended up buying both of the previous skills that he had found interesting, but he knew that he wouldn't be using them in the tournament since they weren't really designed for that kind of combat. Instead he was looking forward to using them in his next expedition since they would be quite useful.

Eventually all of the waiting did end up paying off as a skill appeared on the auction hub that immediately grabbed Joshua's attention. This skill was something that fit Joshua's ideal for the upcoming tournament and then some.

[Vengeance (Passive/Active) – This skill allows the user to take advantage of being hit. All energy used to harm the holder of this skill whether it's physical or magical will be stored within the user of the skill. The user of this skill can then use the energy stored away in any of their attacks in retaliation. The energy that is unleashed will be fifty percent of the total damage taken by the user from enemy attacks. There is a limit to the amount of the energy that can be stored that will reflect in the users mana or aura when reached.]

Joshua stared completely shocked at the capabilities of this skill. It was a skill that was perfect for Joshua in every single way. He couldn't keep himself from smiling as he rushed to place his first bid on it.