Chapter 6: Bestowing Skills, Mage Combinations

He watched as the backpack was tossed over gently, stood up, picked it up, and walked in the direction of the studio, opening the equipment information to examine it as he walked. Captain Han immediately noticed that these were either yellow-grade or green-grade items, with one purple-grade item among them.

Wait, that’s a purple-grade item! He stopped in his tracks, quickly opened the detailed information for that piece, and discovered it was a mage’s item called the Fixed-point Staff.

A weapon, and it had equipment skills! His gaze slid down, and after reading, he unknowingly muttered, “A divine item!”

The skills were Gift and Infinite Firepower.

Equipment skill, Gift: Passive—when hitting a target, there’s a 1% chance to refresh all active skills (including one’s own skills).

Equipment skill, Infinite Firepower: Splits into ten fireballs, each fireball autonomously attacks targets, causing various effects such as equivalent to a white-grade Weakening Charm (reduces all stats by 10%), Ignition (adds an extra fireball hit), Spread (nearby targets suffer the same damage), each effect has a 2% probability. Whenever this skill lands an attack, Gift is guaranteed to trigger once. After casting, the skill enters cooldown.

On the sofa, Han Qianyun looked up at Kuangsha, clutching the staff with reluctance to let it go, and said, “I want this staff. I’ll pay you for it...”

“No, no, I just realized I don’t have a map. I need to unlock the map and the game’s rules—I feel like I don’t know anything in this game.”

“You want the map... fine! I’ll give it to you later, but let me check what the other two skills are first.”

He looked and found the skills were Invincible Slash and Firepower Support.

Checking the other equipment, it seemed none were for the Berserk Shieldbearer.

Han Qianyun apologized, “None of these are your gear. Do you want the Invincible Slash skill? I can give it back to you!”

“No need. Right now, I’m invincible anyway. Who needs a slash? Slash pumpkins, slash watermelons...” Hua Tian stretched out his right hand with flair, waved it off.

Han Qianyun wore a face full of question marks, but said nothing. Fine, let him be narcissistic!

“All right, I’ll give it to the warrior then. That’s about it for today—you can keep playing or log off and continue tomorrow. I’ll send you the information in a bit. Here’s your backpack!”

Hua Tian slung the backpack Han had returned to him over his shoulder. Leaving the studio, he checked his personal information.

Name: Kuangsha (Berserk Slayer)
Level: 10 (Beginner)
Class: Berserk Shieldbearer
Attributes: 63.63.63 (Strength, Speed, Defense)

Skills: Shattering All Creation [Void Grade lv2], Heaven-Devouring Divine Fist [Void Grade lv1]
Technique: Master of Fist Arts [Level 3]
Equipment: None
Team: Han Crown Squad [Member]
Squad Tokens: 0
Gold Coins: 10

He glanced at his equipment and squad tokens. Goodness, there was nothing at all. He figured tomorrow would be a good time to practice skill proficiency, and happily checked his gold coin count: ten coins.

Logging off and exiting the game, he went downstairs, jogged to a small shop, bought sausage, instant noodles, chicken drumsticks, and cola. Returning home, he realized he hadn’t bought a main dish. Just as he was about to head out again, he saw his game watch on his arm light up.

Inside was a message: “I really like your equipment. Your salary has increased by ten thousand, totaling thirty thousand. Plus, I’m giving you fifty thousand squad tokens.”

Hua Tian looked at it—so his salary had gone up by ten thousand. If only he hadn’t acted so modest, he might have gotten a few tens of thousands more! He smacked his lips a few times.

...

Meanwhile, in the training room, Han Qianyun found her teammates and handed them the equipment.

“These are from Kuangsha’s solo mode just now. If you want them, use squad tokens to exchange, or barter. By the way, Liu Wei and Hao Tian, come over—I have two skills to give you.”

Liu Wei and Hao Tian heard this and hurried over to look.

Personal skill: Invincible Slash
Level: Universal melee class, purple-grade skill
Effect: When used by a warrior, power doubles; when universal class attacks from behind, power triples

Personal skill: Firepower Support
Level: Gunner exclusive, blue-grade skill
Effect: Activate. The longer the charge time (maximum 30 seconds), the faster the attack speed (up to five times), and the longer the duration (maximum 30 seconds). Artillery automatically attacks the target, type is determined by the held weapon.

“Captain, these skills are...” Liu Wei stared at them and spoke to the captain.

“They’re meant for you.”

Liu Wei replied, “No, that’s not what I meant. But Captain, I might not have enough squad tokens!”

“It’s fine, just pay me slowly. It’s only a blue-grade skill anyway.”

Hao Tian was about to say something, but upon hearing the captain’s words, he obediently kept quiet.

“Hao Tian, yours is a purple-grade skill. I can’t be so generous and just give it to you.” Her tone shifted, voice almost sounding like a different person.

She paused, thinking of something. “You must pay all your squad tokens first, and the rest you can pay off gradually.”

After she finished, Hao Tian saw her take out a pen and a sheet of paper written in black ink and handed it to him.

Hao Tian looked it over repeatedly, afraid he’d be cheated. Finding no problems, he signed his name and handed over all his 574 squad tokens to her.

Then, with a gloomy expression, he took the skill and left for the Hall of Learning to study it.

“Captain, weren’t you planning to have him leave the team? Why give him a skill? If he can’t pay and you kick him, he doesn’t have to pay.”

“No worries. Didn’t he sign this paper? I have a real-world backup. If he doesn’t finish paying, he has to pay a hundred thousand gold in real life. That’s just a trivial sum for him. I deliberately didn’t tie it to real-world accounts, so he won’t ignore these squad tokens when he leaves. If he doesn’t sign... I just won’t give it to him, hmph!”

She finished speaking and revealed a sheet hidden under the table, filled out remotely—a genuinely signed document. A binding contract stating that if squad tokens weren’t fully repaid, a hundred thousand gold must be paid in real life.

Liu Wei stared, stunned. Ruthless... truly ruthless!

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A few novel settings: What do these attributes represent? Later, personal info will be cleaner and simpler, without strength, speed, or defense prompts. Using Kuangsha’s stats as an example, normally a Berserk Shieldbearer’s highest attribute is defense, like 13.3.93 (I won’t change Kuangsha’s previous numbers). Later, with Kuangsha’s cheat, the author is too lazy to keep revising, so just use the future class ratios. Physical and magical attack (attack power) are the average of strength and speed. With this setup, every class has attack damage, or else solo mode would be a graveyard for low-attack players. Unless a skill specifically requires strength, speed, or defense bonuses, normal attacks use this calculation.

There’s no mana. Player health (blood, life) is the sum of all three attributes, e.g., 63+63+63=189. Wild monsters’ health is the sum of their attributes, then add some zeros depending on their realm. Zombies’ health uses the same formula as players, but they possess the special trait of fully recovering health in ten seconds if uninjured. Players self-learn all their skills with a built-in cooldown of thirty seconds. Equipment (weapons) with their own skills, pet skills, items, potions, charms—all have different cooldowns, some long (up to a day), some short (hundreds of times per second).

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