Chapter 68: [First S-Grade skill!]

[Artifact: Skill Deconstructor!Grade: S

Status: Bound to Adrian John Rodriguez!

Effects: Allows the user to convert Skill Cards into Skill Points!

Card Conversion Rates:

-10 F Grade Cards: 1 Skill Point

-1 E-Grade Card: 1 Skill Point

-1 D-Grade Card: 10 Skill Points

-1 C-Grade Card: 100 Skill Points

-1 B-Grade Card: 1000 Skill Points

-1 A-Grade Card: 10,000 Skill Points

-1 S-Grade Card: 100,000 Skill Points]

"Neat," I thought as I looked at the description of the artifact. From the number of cards that I have right now, getting another 24000 Skill points was feasible. This way, I can have about 50k Skill points.

'Given each B-Grade skill requires roughly around 10,000 Skill points to get to A-Grade, I can essentially have 5 A-Grade skills, huh?' I thought as I can now bring almost all of my skills to B-Grade and above.

Though first things first…

[Bets!]

[Bet on the number of survivors that are going to be at the end of tutorial 5 X10]

"Hmmm? Just this one?" I was confused. I looked at the bets as I reloaded the screen a couple of times, but this was the only bet present this time. It made me a bit sad as I closed the [Bets] before looking at the number of GM Points I currently had now.

[GM Points: 256 Million!]

'This will be enough for an S-Grade skill right?' I pondered as I recalled that almost all of the skills that I had made up to S-Grade were somewhere in the 500 Millions or above. Though, there was one more concern that I had other than this one.

Which skill should I upgrade? And what kind of S-Grade skill should I choose first?

[Hunt] and [Perception!] are out of the question given how I wanted a superhuman skill to replace it.

[Accelerated Learning!] and [Illusion!] can be upgraded, but do I really need them right now? I mean, they are functioning properly even against a Baron Vampire.

[Professional Cooking!] is just there while [Absolute Nullification!] is already good enough as a secret defense skill, anything more would be overkill.

[Inventory], I don't exactly need to upgrade it, do I?

[Mana Regeneration!] [Mana Sense!]. Should I make them as a single skill? Nope, I think I should make changes to [Aura] and incorporate it into a skill that does the same function as [Mana Regeneration!] and [Mana Sense!]. That way, I can have 2 more skill slots free.

Then all that's left is this…

[Parkour!]

An E-Grade skill that helped me a lot in both the first tutorial and during the safe zone. In essence, it was a great skill even while being an E-Grade.

'How about if I upgrade it to A-Grade first and see its effect?' I thought it was the only skill remaining in E-Grade right now. And then giving it a bit of a thought, I used 11,110 skill points to make it reach A-Grade. There were no down sides to it.

The skill then started glowing bright golden, before the light slowly faded. I had to close my eyes for a few moments before I looked at the new description

[Skill: Kinetic Mastery!

Grade: A

Description: Allows the individual to have perfect control over their body and environment, enhancing the core principles of parkour to an almost limitless degree.

Effects:

-Instant Adaptation: The ability to assess and move through any environment seamlessly, no matter how complex or dangerous, without any need for prior knowledge of the terrain.

-Enhanced Agility and Reflexes: The person can move at incredible speeds, react instantaneously to changes in the environment, and execute perfect flips, jumps, and rolls in mid-air.

-Environmental Manipulation: Not only could the user use objects like walls or poles to boost momentum, but they could also momentarily alter their properties (e.g., making a wall more elastic to rebound off it or a surface stickier for gripping).

-Momentum Manipulation: The user would have control over inertia, allowing them to conserve, redirect, or cancel momentum. This could lead to feats like running up walls indefinitely, leaping across vast distances, or stopping instantly from a high-speed movement.

-Teleportation via Movement: With enough momentum, the user could essentially blur through space, appearing to "blink" between two locations, making them almost impossible to track when in motion.

-Gravity Defiance: The ability to manipulate the body and environment allowing them to reduce the effects of gravity on themselves, letting them momentarily hang in the air, bounce off impossible angles, or make enormous leaps and drops without harm.

Restrictions: The limits of this skill is based upon the limits of the user's stats!]

"…"

A huge text wall appeared in front of me as I observed the entire thing for a few seconds. Then, as I began reading through everything, my mouth was opened up wide as I looked at the entire thing over and over.

"How the fuck is this an A-Grade Skill?!!!" I shouted out loud as I looked at that skill. It was a total cheat! It was excellent! Perfect! An art!

I could control momentum itself to deal dozens of times more damage. I can use kinetic manipulation to run extremely fast, enough to even evade normal vision. I can manipulate gravity to some extent? The heck! Why isn't an S-Grade skill? Or more importantly, if this was A-Gade, then what monstrous technique would I get at S-Grade?

For the next 20 minutes or so, I kept gleefully looking at the skill over and over again. I was almost tempted to upgrade this skill to S-Grade, but then I controlled myself. Being greedy was never going to be helpful no matter what the situation.

I took a deep breath. Meditated for a few seconds, before clearing my mind and began thinking about the present situation. Even though [Kinetic Mastery] was fucking fantastic, it wasn't what I needed right now. At least not beyond what I had already got.

I didn't need any mana skills either. The combination of [Aura] and the others were already enough for me to last this next tutorial. As for the mental skills, let's just bring [Accelerated Learning to A-Grade as well.

[Accelerated Thinking!

Grade: A

Effects: Sёarᴄh the novel(F~)ire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

-Allows the user to think 10 times faster!

-Allows the user to comprehend things 200% faster!

-Increases the Focus of the user by 200%! When learning and understanding new things, the user will be able to analyze things 2 times faster!

-Increases the Learning proficiency by 100%!]

The cost was 10,000 Points again, but looking at the skill it was worth it. There was no more headache, which was pretty much a boon to the skill. I guess, even though it doesn't have a boatload of text like [Parkour!], it was still an A-Grade skill. In fact, all the A-Grade skills are monstrous in a way.

With this, physical, mental and mana aspects were done. For the time being, I did not need anything more than what I had in those parts. So, that brings me back to the main question.

'Which skill should I get to S-Grade?' I pondered over it, as I sat down and even used [Accelerated Thinking!], to aid in my thoughts. And after going through everything for a dozen minutes, I could only think of one skill that I would need right now, more than the others.

The protagonist's main skill: [Inspect!]

'But I probably won't need it when the [Map] gets upgraded further?' I was in a bit of a dilemma again. Though a sudden idea appeared in my mind again. I never needed an [Inspect!] skill to be honest… there was something else, a far better option for me.

And then I began making changes to my only mental skill [Accelerated Thinking], once again. This time, a detailed change to its complete settings.

[Accelerated Analysis!

Grade: S

Effects:

-Allows the user to deduce and analyze anything that he sees. The [Status Window!] of all things around the user will be shown to the user. The user can also partially see the functions and effects of various objects!

-Time taken to analyze the object/person will depend upon the grade of the object/user!

-The User's thinking ability will be enhanced, making him think 10 times faster, allowing him to comprehend things 200% times faster. When focussed, the comprehension and analysis increased by another factor of 2. Each time the user analyzes a new S-Grade item or above, the learning efficiency of the user will permanently increase by 1%!]

[Would you like to make the following changes for 650 Million Points?!]

'All right. Now let's bring the cost down,' I smiled as I began adding a couple of restrictions to it. And honestly, it took only 3 restrictions to make it reach 250 Million Points.

[Restrictions:

-The User must have a [Gift] related to mental ability!

-The User must have [Eidetic Memory] and [Perfect Measurement] skills!

-The User must have the [Blessing: Thoth's Wisdom!] to use the skill!]

Almost typed 'Thot's wisdom' there.

Anyways, with those three restrictions, I got the skill down for [250 Million GM Points!] exactly. I guess, those skills I have are kind of needed for the Analysis, so having them before, brings the total cost of the skill down by half. Plus as for the [Thoth's Wisdom],

[Blessing: Thoth's Wisdom!

Grade: B

Effect: By the grace of the Egyptian God, your total Widom has increased by 5%!]

[Would you like to create the Blessing for 4 Million Points?]

With that, I was once again back in the range of 2 million points. I should keep this much with me in case of an emergency.

Clicking [Yes!] again, I then stretched as I finally had my first [S-Grade!] skill. Though, the work was far from done as something else was majorly left. That was to convert the skill into skill points. Even though I wasn't going to use those skill points, I decided that it should be better to keep the inventory relatively empty.

And after another hour of hard work…

[Skill Points: 32410!]

'If I could just collect enough skill cards and make that number into 100,000, maybe I can have another S-Grade skill?' I thought for a moment before then looking at the rest of the messages that I had. Though there was only one panel left to check.

[Quests!]

-Normal Quest: 1

-Continuity Quest: 5

-Skill Based Quest: 3

-Hidden Quest: 10

-Unique Quest: 3

-??? Quest: 1

I began looking at the quests one by one, hoping to find at least some information about the situation I was in.

And as I was reading through them, I came across a certain quest that made question the entire meaning of the [Tutorial!] again.

Though more than that a flare entered into my eyes as I narrowed my eyes at the rest of the description of that particular quest.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds as I recollected my thoughts. And then, barely controlling my rage, I opened my eyes up before I mumbled.

"Seems like… I would need to wipe an entire race this time."

This time… I was going to destroy the very city that I was protecting all night.