Defiance of the Fall

It seemed that the skill didn’t just copy the edge of his weapon , it rather projected it . That was a disadvantage he hadn’t expected , but then again it still was an extremely powerful and diverse skill for being the first attack skill the class offered .

With no other option he could only find a refuge for the night again , and instead spend greater time on practicing with Axe Mastery] and meditating . He briefly considered whether to keep going , using one of the large swords in his pouch as a weapon instead . But he eventually decided against it .

For one he couldn’t use his skills with a sword , and there also was another reason he hesitated . He wanted to use other weapons as little as possible in general .

When he picked his class it generally looked like the options were based on his activities . Since his stats , skills and experiences all were centered on the axe he wanted to upgrade in this direction when he got the opportunity to upgrade the Hatchetman class . He was afraid that he might miss out on a good class upgrade if he kept using too many various weapons and not fulfill the prerequisites .

That’s why he also really wanted to find more axes , so he wouldn’t be forced to use knives as much for throwing or as back-ups . He even toyed with the idea of stalking the roving gathering parties on the island to find someone with axes , and then take them out . But ultimately it still felt like an unnecessary risk . That he managed to kill the party at his camp so smoothly largely could be attributed to the element of surprise . He felt that he could likely wipe out most of the parties by now , but he couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be able to send out a warning signal like the flame mage had tried .

Zac finally found a decent cave and settled in . As he was practicing his axe technique he was pondering whether he already had to change his plans . The reason was the huge amount of Nexus Coins he was racking up . A day of killing the monkeys resulted in roughly 100 000 nexus coins . That amount took him almost a week to gather when desperately hunting barghest .

He currently had 347 000 coins , and only needed two days to gather the necessary coins for the movement skill Steps of Gaia] . He felt his current weakness was that his speed was lacking . If he could move faster he wouldn’t have to keep throwing his axe at people , but instead simply run up to them .

Allocating his free points in Dexterity was an option , but he felt it wasn’t the correct one . He had already decided to focus one or two stats and let his titles take care of the rest . He already had 59 Dexterity , which should be considered a lot for anyone not having Dexterity as his or her main attribute .

Besides , after observing the demons he fought he realized they did the same thing . They were specialized in one or two stats as well . The mages didn’t have overbearing Strength or Dexterity and likely focused on Wisdom and intelligence . Instead , they used things like magic shields and earthen walls to protect themselves from attacks .

Zac felt that this was the way that people powered up in the multi-verse . Focus on the attributes that best empowered him , and have skills shore up the shortcomings .

He knew he likely had survived the mentalist mage's binding during his last bout with the demons due to his high Intelligence and Wisdom . But he assumed that normally a warrior would have a skill to protect their mind instead of wasting their free stat points on those attributes .

The only problem for Zac was that he didn’t have a ready source of skills except the Nexus Node . But the choices there seemed quite limited , and he hadn’t gotten any new Class skill quests yet . If specialization was the way to go it also meant that he had wasted some stat points in the beginning by putting them into Vitality and Dexterity .

Of course , without the points in Vitality he might be dead by now , but not being optimized left a bad taste in his mouth .

Chapter 45 - Monkey Captain

Finally Zac reluctantly decided to not get the skill for now . He wanted to find and kill the third Herald first .

He really wanted the power-up , but he also realized he was working against the clock here . He was already somewhat surprised there wasn’t a monkey army hunting him in the mountains after his activities . It wasn’t a small number of stone monkeys he had killed in the last two days after all .

He was also getting closer and closer to the area where the demons were active , and they could notice his activities at any moment . The mountains were getting filled with sites of desolation , with hundreds of monkey carcasses adorning the hills by now .

He was afraid that if he spent another two days grinding monsters , and then one day to travel to his camp and back to get the skill , his window of opportunity to kill the Herald would pass .