The Primal Hunter

Chapter 727: Nevermore: Level 230 Profession Skill Selection

So… skill selections. It had been a good while since Jake had one last, and he would be lying to himself if he claimed he hadn’t been at least a little bit excited. Especially when it was his very first one in C-grade. The fact that he had gotten it while just sitting around waiting on a flying ship had definitely increased his enjoyment too.

He hadn’t rushed it, though. Usually, Jake wanted to jump right into them, but there was honestly no need to, especially not now that he had reached C-grade. While it was true that there could be some negative consequences to delaying picking a skill – primarily that you would end up getting worse options – the opposite was also true. For some factions, it was even pretty normal to delay skill selections until you had practiced a certain technique or magic with the hope of getting a skill.

This was also why there wasn’t even a warning about negative consequences for waiting with the skill selection prompt, contrary to evolutions. He also wouldn’t have to delay that long. Leveling-wise, floor forty-two had honestly been shit as they spent most of their time running and hiding, and with Jake having to constantly be on watch, he barely found any time to do alchemy. That is why he had only ended up getting his profession level while waiting in the capital of the Aloft Empire to meet the Emperor, at which point waiting just a few weeks more for the in-between room wasn’t out of the question.

So that is what he did. But Jake was still Jake, and his patience did have limits, especially when he didn’t just have a profession to choose skills but a class to pick for too.

After entering the boring in-between room, Jake excused himself from the party as the other four went to meditate a bit by themselves to fully recover their resources. He found a nice corner to sit in and, with high expectations and anticipation, began.

Considering his profession had reached 230 first, it was only right to start with that.

*Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper profession skills available*

Accepting the prompt, Jake saw five options appear, making him smile. His smile did fade a bit when he saw the total list had shrunk quite a lot, as many of the skills he had been offered in prior skill selections were now gone.

Though, on second thought, it probably didn’t actually matter that much, did it? He rarely went back and picked skills he had been offered prior anyway.

Shaking his head, Jake’s smile returned as he turned his attention to the skills on display. Man, I have missed this.

He was going to take his time going over every single skill on offer, that was for sure. Starting with quite an interesting one.

[Conjure Virtual Mind (Epic)] – What is better than one mind? Two. Create a simulation of your mind that can think autonomously and develop ideas. This will be a clone of your mind and thus still be limited by your current Records. Can only exist within your Soulspace and cannot directly influence anything around it or manipulate any energy. All information between you and your virtual mind must be relayed orally or telepathically. The duration of the virtual mind and its level of sophistication are determined by Wisdom, Willpower, and Intelligence.

The first skill and the system started out by offering an epic rarity one. This was the C-grade version of epic rarity, too, making it even better. The same as if the very first skill offered in D-grade had been ancient rarity… or maybe not. Either way, the first skill offered was sure something.

This seemed like the first step in creating an avatar, and he had quite a lot of ideas as to why he was offered the skill. The first was naturally Sim-Jake, who had effectively been not just a simulated mind, but an entirely separate version of himself. The second source of inspiration was maybe Minaga and his cloning ability… but that one was a bit of a stretch. Of course, it was also entirely possible this was just a basic skill most people got offered around this point in their Path, as cloning or at least avatar creation did seem like a pretty basic technique for most of those considered truly powerful.