Ignoring the continuous wailing in the distance, Hecate sat on the floor leaning her back against the Save Crystal.

Now that everything was done, she checked her appearance. Her robes and hair were dirty with maggot mucus, as well as spider blood and ashes from these unnamed 1F and 2F ruins. This dirt wouldn't go away on her robes until she cleaned it, and neither would her hair.

"Oh well, that can be done later... More importantly..."

She opened her inventory and storage from the Save Crystal, checking of the loot that she obtained.

Compared to 1F and B1F, Hecate wasn't able to collect many loot in 2F. Fire-type spell sure is powerful, but at the same time is detrimental to use, making it quite double-edged sword.

Using fire spells in hunting would definitely destroy the enemy along with their loots!

Hecate could only shakes her head, trying to not think about that again and proceed to calculate her loots.

"Lets see...Let's look at the Soul Essences first!"

Soul Essence is an item that won't do anything by itself. It only reveals its effect by compounding it on the Equipment. However, only an Equipment with Enchant slots that can be compounded with it.

The type of equipment was also important because the essences had different effects depending on where they were compounded.

Other than increasing MaxMP, this essence has little use to Hecate. Acidic Splash is a skill that just spurting acid to the enemy. The acid liquid only do a little damage, though it was highly combustible to Fire.

Perhaps it has some uses to increase her Vermilion Blast power, but its few limit use makes it not worth the trouble.

The ability to stand on the wall sure is great, though it was redundant with Hecate's skill Wall Run that she got from Acrobatics Sub-class. Both can make the player walks in the wall. The difference is, Wall Run requires Hecate to run, or else she will fall down.

In that sense, the Soul Essences effect is superior than her skill.

Sticky Web is a skill that makes player can unleash spider silk. The silk is brittle so it can't be used like Spiderman does, like propelling oneself to jump from building to building. Though, it was burnable so it does have some use to make Fire spread faster. Even if she did not go to combat, it can be used to produce Cobweb every day.

"It seems, the Larva Spider one is more useful to me, while Veli-spider is more useful to Assassin or Ranger."

Hecate nodded with satisfied face after looking at both of their effect, but she was shocked when she saw the last essence.

Such bountiful effect for one Soul Essence, truly worthy as one of the higher-tiered monster. Too bad Hecate only has one of it, so she had to choose where she would compound the Soul Essence.

Decreasing spell cast-time by quarter of the original time, that is very useful effect in both PvE or PvP. One second difference to spells cast-time can very well flip the tide of war. Skill Arts can be ignored since she is a Spellcaster, it was not her business.

Poison immunity and boosts Poison-related spells effect by thrice, Although Hecate did not use poison spells, but Archwitch has such skills in the Skill Tree, Dark-attribute section.

Last of the effect is pure INT boost. In other words, increase spell firepower.

"If Adult Veli from 2F have such useful Soul Essence, I wonder how it will be in the 3F and above..."

Hecate couldn't help but wonder and thinking if she should try to hunt in 3F later. However, she quickly shakes her head, dispersing that thought away. The boss' wailing scream still could be heard even until now. Going there is just courting death.

In the end, Hecate could only store the essence. As for the choice, she can think it later in the future.

She moved her attention to the other loots.

"Sticky Mucus and Spider Ashes can be used as an Alchemy ingredients.
I don't have that skill so I'll just exchange it later for some GCP."

This was outside Hecate's ability so she planned to just exchange it in the Genesis Guild's Guild Treasury to increase her Guild Contribution Points.

 

♠♠♠

Guild Contribution Point, or shortened as GCP is a point system that applied in every guild. This point is personally given by the Guild Leader to his/her Guild members, or automatically calculated according to their contribution in the guild. Guild members can exchange their points for stuffs like Equipment, Material items, or Gold Coins inside the Guild Treasury.

Guild members don't instantly receive points upon donating stuff. Instead, it was treated like another currencies.

The system resembles more like a market place, except it was guild internal only. If some player wants to use Hecate's stuff inside the Guild Treasury, they have to exchange it with their points according to how many amount that Hecate set, and the amount deducted will automatically added to Hecate's points.

And then, she can use the points to exchange for Blacksmith material, like metal or ore.

♠♠♠

 

Hecate sorted the items in her inventory and divides them into subfolders.

"Cobweb is for players with Tailor Sub-class, they can create Fabrics with it.
Well, not my business. I'll exchange this to GCP too."

She intended to throw the useless loot she didn't use into the Guild Treasury as if she were throwing trash in the trash bin. As a wise person once says, a trash from someone might be a treasure for others.

Like a certain septic tank pumping company once said, "Your shit is the source of our fortune"!

"Meat, and Carcasses can be sent to Rena-cchi to cook. I hope she will like it."

The enormous amount of ingredients was likely more than enough to increase Rena-cchi's Cooking skill proficiency. With Rena-cchi around, Hecate was able to obtain many meat dishes for lunch that could be eaten in real life.

Not only that, if Rena-cchi's affection towards her increases, it will be easier to exploit her in the future!

"And then, all the broken stuff and unknown coins, I'll bring them to the Appraiser first.
But, if those items ended up as trash, I'll just melt them into my furnace!"

Because the items was damaged by her Vermilion Blast, Hecate didn't place much hope on those items. Though, the coins should be an antique that can be sold high to NPC Nobles. But, if the items is deemed useless then she could melt and reuse them as materials for her Blacksmith skills.

Other than the loot Hecate obtained from the ruins, she also has the loot from betraying the raid-party. Mostly it was Equipment from her guildmate, and some are random stuff that did not really worth much. The useless stuff as usual can be dumped into the Guild Treasury.  However, for the Equipment she can only directly sell it in the market.

It would be unwise to exchange it into GCP or use it for herself.

What if her guildmate recognize their items? Wouldn't that be awkward?

However, Hecate was not betraying her guild for no reason. Done with checking her loot, she touched the Save Crystal again. Now that her negative karma already cleared, the previous grayed choice can be accessed.

"Time to exchange some Glory Points! I wonder how much I have collected until now."

So she excitedly murmured as she pressed the choice button. Not long after, the exchange screen appeared in front of her.

A long list of items appeared with each of their price for exchange.

Thanks to Hecate massacred the party and Kill Steal the World Boss, she obtained the solo reward of 1000 Glory Points.

This point is extremely special and can't be compared with other point system, because it could only be obtained with achievement and can't be brute forced with Gold or real money.

Glory Points is very hard to get, and the most easiest to obtain it was to kill Boss Monsters. Killing a regular boss in a dungeon while in a party gives 10 points, while soloing a boss gives 200 points. World Boss gives 5 times the regular boss does, though the difficulties obviously are far higher.

But in exchange, the items that can be exchanged could be quite balance-breaking items.

♠♠♠

 

Firstly, Equipment Sets for all Job-classes. They provide great bonuses and can multiply the player strength by fold.

Leon's Shining Knight Set was from this list, except, all of them was custom upgraded by a master Blacksmith. His Equipment also enchanted several times by a skillful Runemaster, using various Runes that can be obtained from the same lists.

With those Equipment, Leon's HP supposedly reached more than 100.000 HP, with various buff that almost double his strength. A normal Templar would only have around 40.000 HP without equipping them.

- But in the end, he still died from Hecate's Mana Explosion.

 

Sacred Healing Set is tailored mainly for Priest and High-Priest Job-class. Rena-cchi had this set equipment and her heals can recover 30.000 HP with a single hand wave, though her +6 Healing Wand is now in Hecate's hand.

- Without the wand, Rena-cchi's Set Equipment is drastically weakened and her heal wouldn't be as good as before.

But fortunately, Equipment Sets can be exchanged individually, though the total cost will be higher than exchanging the whole set at once. If it wasn't for this, Rena-cchi might be crying blood as she have to collect 400 Glory Points again.

 

Imperial Spellcaster Set is mainly for 2nd tier or higher Spellcaster Job-classes. Equipping them can raise INT stat, MaxMP, gives high MP regeneration and reducing Spell Cast-time. A truly meta equipment for Spellcasters and sells with very high price in the market when it appeared.

Many Spellcaster players uses them and love them, but not Hecate. Mainly because of the existence of the next items.

 

Nucleus of 4 Elements... Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind.

They're just a little shiny orb that glows red, blue, brown, or green. It doesn't do anything and just looked pretty like marbles or pearls. That is... if the player doesn't have Blacksmith Sub-class like Hecate does.

By using her skills, Hecate can use them as a material to create elemental equipment.

The equipment that using these Nucleus will give the player boost damage and resistance to a single element, in exchange increase the damage taken from the other element.

And since players can equip up to 10 rings, she collected 650 points first. Then she uses cheap ring that can be bought in the NPC shop to be "fused" with the essences. She repeated the above step gradually to create the elemental rings, starting from Ring of Aqua, then Ring of Ventus, Ring of Ignis, and lastly Ring of Gnome.

The total bonus damage from the 10 rings is far greater than the set equipment could offer. And Lv1 advanced-tier spells from the rings did not require too much Cast-time that needs to be reduced.

- In Hecate's view, Imperial Spellcaster Set is no longer fragrant!

 

Why only Hecate that exploited this method?

Did any other players not discover this, even though the game is already more than 2 years?

Well, they did... Except it was used mainly to create Elemental Swords or Armors. As for rings, an increase in 80% of damage taken by other elements is giving a strong deterrent to the players. They might equip just one, and just one only. Not many dared to equip 10 all at once like Hecate did, nor did this idea occurred in their mind in the first place.

Unlike the old MMO, Ascension is a Virtual Reality that makes the player can feel the sensation inside the game as close as possible with the real thing. Getting hit by a 80% damage increase is not a pleasant sensation, much less 800% damage increase.

Besides, Imperial Spellcaster Set uses Glove, which prevent the player equipping 5 rings in one hand. And its benefit is just looked too delicious to be passed. So many spellcaster players did not think further and just use ready-made equipment.

 

And the last is Slot Enchant Core.

As the item name implies, this item can be used by Blacksmith to insert a Slot into the equipment so it can be used to compound Soul Essence. Every piece of Equipment can be slotted without any upper limit.

However, the inserting process can fail and the difficulty of failing will rises by fold the more slot it have.

The failed process can be very well ruining the equipment itself, turning it into useless junk.

♠♠♠

 

Originally, Hecate planned to exchange few Slot Enchant Core, along with some Nucleus of Water and Wind to create another elemental equipment and boosts her spell power to a new height.

But then, her eyes quickly fixed on something that was not existed in the list before.

"Hmm? Isn't this..."

It was something that she already saw before, right after she nuked the ground with Mana Explosion and killed both Leon and the world boss. An item dropped when Leon died from the collateral damage.

Perhaps, this item will only appear under a condition that her available Glory Points must be enough to exchange the item. This also happened in the past, the 4 Essences suddenly appear in the list once she collected 65 Glory Points.

Hecate quickly put on a pair of white gloves and took out the orb she had gotten in that battle from the storage.

In that moment, an unexpected system message notification appeared in front of Hecate.

The item description suddenly changed and its true information is now revealed.

Now she did not need to bring the item to the Appraiser anymore.

Hecate stared at the window screen for a while, trying to comprehend the written sentences with excitement.

"Oh... what's this? Fusing skills?"

She quickly accessed the internet and search for relevant information of the item. But there was none of it even after changing the keyword several times. It is either players did not know of such items, or the big guys keep this thing as a secret.

After all, not many player can casually kill bosses and collect the staggering 1000 Glory Points. Even if they could, most player would've used it right away to exchange with   Gems or other items, without letting it to accumulate until 1000 points.

"Leon-sama... You unexpectedly hiding such interesting thing..."

Hecate couldn't help but let out a smirk.