The first week of my 'third' life blew by in a flash, I fought in my first death match on the first day, then spent the next five going into the dungeon completing the first floor on my second day, I spent the next two days hunting on the second floor of the dungeon, not because it was difficult as I didn't really notice much more of a difference from the first to the second floors, but the goods you could collect on the second floor were better... marginally, but really I was more testing out the Soul Gem section of my system.
Thanks to increasing my Explorer level to six, I had more points and thanks to those I could select and then increase the [Soul Gem Growth] which allowed each of my kills to be multiplied, as the gem changed color from black to purple after only to kills, at the x8 multiplier, and then again to blue not long after that.
Considering these gems can be sold back for the face value with purple netting you the cost of a black stone from the guild, while blue would get you ten coppers in a single day I could advance my gem up to red at this rate but if I dropped points invested in other things I could further boost the growth and quickly amass a white gem worth hundreds of gold coins, a coin I had never seen before in this world yet.
Though it's not like I could just turn in white gems every other day, that would draw attention for sure, so instead I would need to just develop a single stone and then buy up some spares and then when I can visit other cities I could cash in the stones across the kingdom to rake in the money.
But for now, just getting the ability to have a fast cash influx was nice to see.
After my experimenting ended I continued the hunt for the floor two monster, the [Glow Beetle] which was a hard shelled beetle about the size of a small dog, but would cause occasional flashes to blind opponents.
The drop for this monster was [Glow Powder] kind of a glow in the dark substance but it's lumosity was really low and was only usable by alchemists to create the indoor lighting seen in most inn or shops that weren't made of stone and couldn't have torches.
Having done what I needed to I decided to challenge the floor two boss, and entering the room I was met with a massive beetle form that formed from the dungeon mist.
Appraisal showed the boss to be called [Lumina] but i'd personally call it a Queen Glow Beetle.
It's hard shell was difficult at first to deal with but after reducing my invested Crit Chance to nothing, and instead investing in getting a better sword.
Thanks to the level ups and other skill points recouped from unneed skills right now, I was able to pull out the rank five sword, replacing Balmung with Gram.
[Gram]
5x Attack Power | HP Absorption | MP Drain | Incantation Interruption | Ignore Level Gap Modifiers | Ignore Defense
The new blade was a considerable boost to my personal power and even that hard beetle carapace was easily shattered and three further strikes later the mist formed and absorbed the body leaving behind me new loot.
[Glowing Chitin Plate]
The next up loot for the glow beetles it just looked like a piece of the queens shell but it was light a really dim flashlight.
But it spelled the end of the second floor, so I moved onto the third, but before I could finish the third floor fight against the [Rocklings] the week ended and I needed to prepare myself for the next arena fight.
I didn't know who my opponent was but in night time discussions within the canteen with the other fighters I found I was still listed as a newbie, so I would likewise only be fighting a newbie so I shouldn't need to be too worried but at the same time I needed to be careful since there could be another newbie dark horse like me.
So as the weekender and I relaxed I was informed two days later that my fight would be coming the next day.
So that night I prepared setting up what my chosen build would be to face my opponent.
[Carter]
Job: Warrior 26 | Swordsman 37 | Hero 12 | Senior Villager 40 | Thief 34 | Explorer 12
Special Points: 4
Ability: [Reset] | Appraisal | 5th Job | Exp x20 | 1/20 Exp | Sword 5 | Armor 3 | Shield 3 | Helmet 3 | Arms 3 | Legs 3 | Feet 3 | Chant Removal
This was among my most powerful build unless I was to invest first in getting max jobs and then carrying level capped jobs just to use the points on other things, but doing that would mean the purpose behind the fights was lost humans earned more exp from filling each other, I had earned more level in my last death match than I did the entire first day of dungeon diving, and to burn a lot of that experience on maxed out jobs was pointless.
So I setup my strongest jobs, then invested into ranking up my Equipment till everything was at least Rank three, with my sword remaining as [Gram] at rank five.
Each armor piece have me a 1/2 damage buff so no matter where I was struck I was protected, and the [Helm of Awe] was more comfortable given it was full face coverage compared to [Sunwukong's Headband] nothing against the head band but it came me more piece of mind knowing my watermelon was wrapped in metal rather than cloth.
That plus each piece of armor went from increasing defence by five points each to instead increasing it by twenty, since I had five total equipment pieces my defence was raised by 100 points what that meant in the long run I don't know but hey more defence means I can focus more on offense right?
My look overall had changed, I was still fully armored but I had switched up from my Rank two almost black armor, to the new rank three set which was blue tinted.