Astral Online: Cursed by the Demon Lord to Become the Strongest Beautiful Girl, I Rapidly Grow and Dominate with Cheat Skills Despite Being the Weakest Profession - Chapter 166
Chapter 166: Tasks and Conversations
The sound of strong rain was tapping on the roof.
With each passing day, the rain blanketing the real world seemed to grow slightly heavier.
The calamity that the game had brought into reality…
To fend it off, they would likely need to defeat another ?Great Calamity?, as they had done before.
After saying goodnight to Shiori, Sora returned to her room, drank an energy drink, and sat on her bed, holding her VR headset.
Glancing toward the wall, she noticed a young girl asleep in her bed for some reason.
Then, unexpectedly, a tear slipped from her closed eyes, and she murmured something with her small, cherry-colored lips.
“Papa… Mama…”
That’s what Sora thought she heard.
“…Kurono.”
Calling out to her parents, who were still trapped in the game, the young girl clenched her hand as Sora gently lay down beside her.
She knew, though Kuro never voiced it, that this young child must carry deep fears.
Even as she tried, she could never truly take the place of her parents.
She clung tightly to her hand, her face relaxing just a little with relief.
With a sense of resolve, Sora said, “Game start,” and let her consciousness dive into the virtual world.
……………………
The MP cost to use an enchantment skill was 50 points.
With the ?Silver Magic Sword?’s passive effect, her MP regenerated at 5 points per second, meaning she would lose about 10 seconds each time, waiting for enough MP to accumulate.
So, Sora continued using his enchantment skills on the items laid out before her, drinking magic potions periodically to replenish her MP.
After a few hours of work, she didn’t even know how many empty bottles had dissolved into light particles after being drained. Finishing up by enchanting the last ten steel ingots, she collapsed onto the bed where Laura was sleeping peacefully.
“Ah! My task is finally done!” he exclaimed.
“Good, leave the rest to me,” Inori replied.
At the moment, Inori was experimenting with making a Dark Resistance Potion, stirring a pot filled with melted slime jelly and a simple item called ?ordinary water?.
As she slowly stirred, the liquid turned pitch black, resulting in a Dark Potion.
Inori made five of these, poured them all back into the pot, then added *pure water*, a higher-grade ingredient, and stirred it the same way. After a while, the dark surface glowed faintly, revealing a Level 2 ?Dark Potion II?.
“Hmm, decent enough,” she remarked.
Sora inspected the black liquid in the transparent bottle, checking its properties with a light tap. The potion provided a 10% resistance to dark attribute damage, a useful effect.
Inori then followed the same steps to process slime jelly into other attribute potions and began creating potions to enhance physical abilities.
As she examined the sample items, Sora noticed one thing: unlike the skills used by ?Enchanter?, items processed through alchemy seemed to have a time limit.
For example, Level 1 potions had a duration of one minute, while Level 2 potions lasted two minutes.
“Interesting how alchemy-based creations have a time limit,” Sora commented.
“Now that you mention it, enchantment skills work by usage count,” Inori responded.
Sora nodded in agreement.
?Enchanter? skills have high effects but are generally count-based.
Basically, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing a regular attack or using a fancy skill like ?Dual Nail? or ?Triple Stream?. Each move, no matter how many hits, counts as one attack.
This count-based mechanism is one reason ?Enchanter? receive mixed reviews. Though powerful, each use requires re-enchantment, and the MP consumption is highly inefficient.
While it’s not weak, using enchantment skills can be tricky.
This label has been applied to them by the majority of adventurers as a skill for experts.
“Well, for most ?Enchanter?, the combat style usually involves applying buffs to themselves before attacking monsters. It’s better to save them for critical moments and spread buffs to allies during a full-on attack,” Inori explained.
“Normally, that’s how it goes. I mean, it’s not common to constantly layer enchantment skills in the middle of a battle like I do…” Sora replied.
“That’s because you have a cheat-like state where your MP continuously regenerates thanks to the ?Silver Magic Sword?’s abilities. Do you know that when the frontline fighters obtained the ?Magic Iron? last time and updated their main weapons, not a single one of them was able to acquire the same skill as your sword?” Inori asked.
“Oh, I heard about that from someone. He’s also an ?Enchanter?, so he wanted the same skill, but since he couldn’t get it, he ended up with a skill that increases his maximum MP by 100,” Sora said.
Thus, the ?Silver Magic Sword?’s ability has become a unique ability that only Sora possesses at this point.
For everyone else, it might as well be a unique skill.
Inori stirred the slime jelly infused with ?Attack Power Boost Enchantment? in the pot, voicing her thoughts on the ?Silver Magic Sword?’s ability.
“It’s certainly a point that your sword could set a rare skill because it’s based on the first sword,” she mused.
As far as she could tell, that was the only explanation.
Sora had no other ideas.
While mixing the contents of the pot, Inori smiled wryly.
“After all, unless one becomes a blacksmith, the weapon experience points are something that other adventurers have no way of knowing. …That said, it’s actually quite difficult to accumulate experience points for that first sword, no matter how much effort you put in.”
“Is that so?” Sora asked.
“Yes, it seems that sword has a very low rate of experience point accumulation. For example, if you were to hunt slimes in the starting grasslands and raise your level to 20, you would only accumulate about 10% of the experience points for the sword,” she explained.
“That sounds… tough,” Sora replied.
“Right? So, for those who have leveled up and gained a decent amount of power, it’s usually more efficient to switch to a new, stronger weapon. If you want to max out your experience points in a short time, you’d have to take a hit from the final boss, the Demon Lord, with your sword, just like you did,” Inori added.
“Without that, I probably would have switched my equipment before accumulating any experience points,” Sora admitted.
As levels increase, it’s only natural for players to upgrade their gear to match, progressing to the next stage in the game.
Even if the initial equipment has high durability, its attack power is low. Sora had heard from Kirie that the beginner sets offered by blacksmiths have become significantly cheaper compared to when he started.
They’ve set the prices just right so that beginners who recently started can buy them easily.
If you can buy a full set of equipment from top-class blacksmiths, I would recommend it over the initial sword, even if it has great potential.
With this thought in mind, Sora suddenly called the ?Silver Magic Sword? stored in her inventory to her hand.
When she opened the properties, she noticed that the experience points were almost maxed out.
This meant she would need to ask Kirie for a weapon upgrade soon.
However, since she was in the middle of a sea journey, it seemed she would have to wait until after the situation with Laura was resolved before she could make that request.
“Hm? Are you about to max out your weapon experience?” Inori asked.
“Yeah, I think it’ll be maxed out after a few more battles,” Sora replied.
“When you upgrade next time, I want to be there too,” she said.
“Why’s that?” Sora asked.
“I want to take a look at your ingots. I might be able to help you a little,” she answered.
“Oh, okay. I’ll call you when that happens,” Sora promised.
With that, Sora stood up.
As she approached the door, Inori tilted her head curiously.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing, just going out to feel the night breeze,” Sora replied.
“Hm, the respawn point is fixed here, but be careful not to fall into the sea.”
“Yeah, I’ll be careful.”
With that, she left the room and headed towards the deck.
She opened the window screen and switched from her roomwear to full equipment.
As she climbed the wooden stairs, she tightened her focus and stepped outside, scanning the area with her ?Perception? skill to locate the enemies, focusing on the bow of the ship.
As the strongest adventurer, Sora faced the most dangerous foe under the moonlight.
Before her stood the person who had once tried to kill Satanas at the Dragon King Festival and had pushed Alice to the brink of death.
It was an angel with gray hair.