Chapter 4 The Way Of Fire

I was in my room in a meditation pose, sitting on the floor with my mind focused on my heart crystal. The ten rings continued to compress inwards, starting to form a pattern around my heart crystal. This was a crucial phase, and for the next few hours, I monitored it to make sure that I was going to get the right pattern.

There are three possible patterns, at least ones I knew of; perhaps there were others, but that didn't matter now—it was too late to seek new knowledge. The patterns I knew were the one that left triangle-shaped holes in the cage that was going around my heart crystal, the one that left star-shaped holes, and the last one—the one that I wanted—that left square holes.

What pattern you were left with dictated what passive skill tree you would get access to. The star pattern, or what was named the manager passive skill tree, the bonuses there helped you with all sorts of data and leadership skills. It was most likely the skill tree I would have taken if I had stayed at home.

The triangle-shaped holes gave you the crafters passive skill tree. This one helped you make stuff and, more importantly, make stuff with monster parts. Without this skill tree, it would be basically impossible to make a profit or make any good monster-forged items.

The square holes gave you the combat passive skill tree. This one had five branches: defense, attack, enhancement, resistance, and magic. Each one of those trees would give you different bonuses, helping you achieve your goals and, more importantly, use your skills even better.

Each heart crystal would have a natural tendency to form into one of those patterns, and I was pleased to see that mine seemed to be forming the square holes. I basically didn’t need to do anything, but if I wanted, let’s say have the crafting one, I would have had to concentrate constantly to make sure that the shapes of the holes would be triangles.

It took all night; altogether, I believe it was 12 hours from start to finish before the cage finally clicked, having compressed as far as it could, forming the perfect square holes. As soon as it clicked, power started to course through me with every heartbeat. All of the level-ups had helped me, on average, get 50% stronger than I was when I was level 0, yet now I would be twice as strong as I was before.

Yet I felt more and more power coursing through me. I felt so powerful I wanted to scream, to let everyone know a new power had awoken. It was all my instincts, most likely from when we were still just animals, but it was still so hard to hold back.

Time continued to pass, and I was getting tired. This shouldn't be happening. My triumph turned into panic as I was getting weaker way too fast. I tried to sit up, but my head started to spin, and then everything went black.

I was woken up by the rays of the sun. When I looked out of the window, I realized two things: it was well past midday, and I was still completely exhausted. What had happened? Even my clothing was wet, meaning that I had sweated. That was mildly concerning. Now, I knew I could sweat; it’s just that I couldn’t sweat because of heat. It was called a cold sweat, and I really didn’t like it.

My body could also heat up, but it just couldn't get past a certain temperature. I realized that I was trying to distract myself because obviously something had gone wrong. There were always rumours about someone messing up their 10th level-up, but I was pretty certain that I had successfully leveled up.

I gathered my courage and looked inward. My heart crystal was still there, surrounded by the cage with square holes, and from it, five trees spread. Each one was a different colour; every single one of them only showed two nodes and one I could pick—the starting nodes every tree got. Of course, I couldn’t miss the obvious difference in one of the trees. It was the purple-coloured one representing the resistance tree.

It was a massive tree; I had seen drawings of all the five combat trees. In this library, there weren't any passive tree builds; you could only see them in rank one worlds. They didn't want any of that information here, as they wanted it to be another incentive for people to move forward.

Normally, every level after the 10th, you can direct that experience to one of the nodes so you could get the benefit from it and open up new pathways. You couldn’t choose everything; you would simply not be able to level up enough.

That's why there were so many different builds listed in some of the books even if they didn’t go into details on what passive nodes you needed to pick. Most of the time those builds were referred to as classes. Choosing the proper build was incredibly important, as it could make you from someone who could barely survive to someone who could destroy entire high-ranked maps solo.

All except one of the trees were completely normal, with their first two nodes showing. Those nodes would only give minor boosts to their representative categories. The purple tree stretched far into the distance.

Nodes and their connections worked weirdly; sometimes you needed all previous ones to get the one above, sometimes you didn’t. For example, in the purple resistance tree, after the first two nodes, it split into two, with two branches going upwards and then merging into one once again. After that, it split into five different ones representing the five major elements, then collapsed back into a singular branch, which once again split after that.

There was also another huge difference between the other trees and the resistance tree. A lot of the nodes weren’t dull in colour but were bright, like they were active, which shouldn't be possible. In the five major elements, however, only one node was lit up, and that was the fire one, with the rest being dull. I looked upwards to find the very top of this tree.

There, shining brightly, was one node, and when I focused on it, it said ‘Fire Immunity.’ I do not know exactly how many nodes there were, but there must have been at least 100 or more, with a lot of them lit up.

A little bit down from the very top was once again the five major elemental nodes. I remembered reading a line from a powerful adventurer in one of the books: "If you reach the very top, you will find five major elemental nodes. Reaching this far and using correct skill gems, you will be able to reach 90% resistance to elemental damage."

Not all of the branches were lit up, but as I looked at them, they seemed to be more specialised resistances, like poison and even some chaos damage resistance nodes. But it seems like all the main branches that lead to the very top were completely filled out except for the major nodes for the different resistances that weren't fire.

Still, I started to calculate. The two main paths seemed to be composed of nodes that increased your overall elemental resistance, either by making you tolerate more of it or reducing the amount your body needs to handle. All of those nodes were filled, and that went for every elemental damage type.

There were also the many open purple gem slots and the gem slots for specific elemental resistance types. Gems were different from crystals. Crystals were something you put into item slots, and it gave you skills or improved the skills that were connected to it. Gems modified your passive skill tree with different kinds of effects.

Into the major fire resistance nodes, I should be able to put gems that give me fire resistance. But I know the gems are of different quality, and from the looks of it, the further up you go from the bottom of the skill tree, the larger gems you can fit into them. They should also sometimes give other effects, but once again my information was limited.

There were also the purple gem slots; once again, those should be able to help me modify what my resistances did and perhaps give different effects, but I wasn’t 100% on that. Whatever the case, I had a lot of open nodes that I could fit such gems into.

While there weren't specific numbers for any of the nodes, I did get a bit of a feeling on what every node gave me. So, painstakingly, I went through every single one of them. The end result was that I had about 45% resistance to every major element and 35% resistance to every other element, including chaos, which only the strongest element monsters used—something I didn’t expect ever to fight.

I would have never guessed that my heart crystal could do something like that. To fill out so many nodes, I should have been past level 100. It also wouldn't be hard to take the other major resistance nodes, as it would only take one level for each, but I think I could leave that for later when I start making enough money to actually buy the necessary gems.

This meant that I was incredibly resistant to magic as well, as every magic did some sort of elemental damage, but it didn’t mean that I was invulnerable. A single knife stab could still end me easily enough. There was the defensive skill tree, coloured green. Inside, there should be physical resistances along with other defensive passives.

I could make myself really hard to kill, but what would be the point? Eventually, my defences would still fail. As I was only truly immune to fire. The enhancement tree, coloured yellow, would allow me to boost myself so I would move faster or heal faster or a multitude of other boosts. The attack tree, coloured red, was quite self-explanatory. It would help you do more physical damage.

In the books it said that especially the attack trees didn't just boost one thing; it was just what it focused on. Also, the names were given by us, as none of the trees were actually named. Even the nodes weren’t exactly named; it’s just that that’s how we interpreted what they did when we focused on it.

The last and most complex tree was the magic tree, coloured blue. This one was supposed to change depending on what you picked, but once again that was something I could just get a bit of information on and wasn't even completely certain about that. Well, there was only one way to find all of this out, and that was to advance.

It was scary to think about what is in front of me, especially if someone discovers what my heart crystal is. There should be no way of finding that out except if someone figures it out by seeing what I am capable of. Then I am certain that I will be hunted and killed for the chance of my heart crystal to transform into a gem or a skill crystal. I tried not to think about that as much as possible.

After eating lunch, I went and registered myself to move forward to rank one worlds. I could have just travelled by myself, but by registering all the expenses would be paid, and I would be transported to one of the hub worlds meant for freshly advanced adventurers to start all over again.

I would once again learn new information, and after some mandatory training, I would be given four wild tickets and one expenses-paid trip to another rank one world that would be suitable for my advancement. Fortunately, it seems that my travel date was set to be three weeks from now. That meant that I should be able to finish up all my business here.

From this last run, I should have enough to finally open up my bank account. Unfortunately, I think I will need to wait with the lawyers. Now, every world seemed to have their own banks, but there were a few banks that seemed to be everywhere. Even in this city there were banks like that. It was only a small building, but you could see old energy radiating off the building design and the decorations.

Other banks seemed busy, but this one wasn’t; it was still immaculately clean. The guards looked at me suspiciously while they didn't look like anything special, which was probably more dangerous.

I had put on my best clothing, but it was still a cheap set made of... Actually, I don’t know exactly what it’s made out of. It certainly wasn't wool or linen; maybe something artificial—I remember reading about artificial fabrics and being amazed that it was even possible.

I headed towards a machine to take a number, but before I did I looked towards the only receptionist working and raised an eyebrow. He gave me a small nod, so I didn’t take a number; instead, I just walked up to the receptionist. "Hello there, I would like to open up an adventurer account tied to my adventurer identity and another account that isn’t."

Before, the receptionist had a somewhat of a bored look; he now smiled a bit, while still being completely professional. He immediately started to take out some papers. "It would be my pleasure to help you. The Onyx Bank always looks forward to new up-and-coming adventurers who are smart enough to know how to deal with money to join our bank."

While the entire process took almost three hours and made the Adventurers Guild's security measures look like a piece of wet paper, it was somehow completely tolerable and even somewhat pleasant.

How they managed that, I had no idea, but I walked out of there now having two bank accounts with barely anything in them, but my money would now be a lot safer and I should be able to access it in a few hundred worlds easily enough.