The Concealment skill comes from professions that often operate in the shadows, like Nightingale, while Tree Tenacity comes from the Druid. This is an active self-protection skill and one of the most practical non-core skills (*) for a Druid. It can convert mana to transform the skin into a bark-like state for a period, increasing natural protection by 50% per level.
This skill is extremely useful when paired with a large number of natural protection amulets and is one of Brand’s most commonly used tactical structures in the later stages.
Of course, the main reason is that these two skills are transparently priced at the Royal Geographical Society (*) in Brags. Naturally, young people wouldn’t pass up such an opportunity to learn cross-profession skills, especially when tasks are not required.
However, after patching up these skills, the few hundred points of skill experience painstakingly squeezed out from the scholar profession were exhausted. Brand knew that skill experience in the game was meant as a compensatory measure, with the game primarily requiring players to level up skills through practice and use—he just didn’t have the American time for it now.
Considering the fierce battle at Sharp Stone River Valley, his swordsmanship barely advanced to just turning into 6+2.
But before Brand flipped a few pages of the book in hand, Tama’s alchemy was already completed. The future Alchemy Master excitedly brought a dagger over, like a child showing off a toy, and said:
"Lord, it’s finished!"
"So quickly?" Brand glanced at the time, the hourglass had only run down by a third: "No defective items?"
"None." Tama confidently shook his head.
Brand couldn’t help but be amazed. It was not something an ordinary person could achieve to have no defective items in the first attempt at crafting a magic item. In the game, Brand’s failure rate was as high as 46% even after a hundred attempts, and that was considered quite good among newbies.
He sighed while taking the dagger to inspect it, opening the attribute display. These little trinkets were bought from the blacksmith shop with a base 1-2 damage as standard weapons, and this time an additional suffix of (1-1 Poison) was added. The dagger’s name also changed to ’Tree Spirit Poisoned Dagger’.
The tag showed Black Iron Level.
Brand placed the dagger back on the iron tray and thought for a moment. This little thing could probably fetch about two thousand Tuo each, which was remarkable. After all, his primary clients were mostly lower-tier nobles or rangers—the high nobles had their personal alchemists and looked down on such trinkets.
Twenty thousand Tuo, that’s still a far cry from the number he promised Little Roman.
But the young man wasn’t anxious; he took out a high-quality Tree Crystal from the Golden Magic Tree and a dwarven short sword bought from Batom.
"The next one is a bit more complicated, Tama, let’s complete it together." he said.
"Together?" Tama was slightly stunned; alchemists typically worked independently, teaming up with wizards at most. He had never heard of two alchemists working together without magical wave interference.
But Brand showed no such concern. He drew a circular array on the ground with chalk and then began supplementing numbers and runes around the array. Watching him complete this, Tama’s eyes gradually filled with surprise, recognizing the numbers as constellation coordinates used by male witches.
Brand then looked up and pointed to a position in the second section of the array, "You stand here."
At this moment, seeing the completed array on the ground, Tama was filled with disbelief. He stood there for a while before blurting out, "Lord, is this the Ring Ceremony?"
"I heard only the wizards of Bujia possess this secret technique, where the Great Master standing at the main star position can borrow the power of many to perform spells or alchemy. Lord, is this—?"
"Correct, this is a simplified version for sixteen people. When the chance arises, I’ll draw complete arrays for thirty-two and sixty-four people for you." Brand nodded. What seemed unbelievable to Tama was a common technique every player had to master in Brand’s world.
The middle-aged man’s eyes immediately sparkled with frenzy. The future Alchemy Master couldn’t wait to stand in the array, more eager than Brand to witness the array’s power.
Brand smiled, picking up the sword—crafted by the dwarves into a beautiful long pointed trapezoid as per the mountain people’s aesthetic. It was imbued with rock magic, and when Brand placed his fingers on it, he sensed it was of the Rock’s Edge kind. Fortunately, the magic of earth didn’t conflict with that of nature, therefore it didn’t greatly affect his subsequent work.