Guild Wars-Novel

Chapter 398 - Grandmaster Alchemist 2

｢Seal of Camelot – Medallion

Rank: Divine

Durability: MAX

Effects:

Passive 1 – Sword of Promised Victory: Damage dealt by one-handed swords are boosted overall by 5,000%.

Passive 2 – Isle of Avalon: The first ten times you die every day, you survive with 1 HP. For the next minute, you enter an invincible state.

Active 1 – Camelot’s Might: Summon the full army of Camelot right before the catastrophic Battle of Camlann. Duration: 7 days. Cooldown: 1 month.

Active 2 – Vault of Camelot: Withdraw one random item from the treasury of Camelot. Cooldown: 1 month.

Note 1: 500,000 Rank 2 troops are summoned at Rank 2.

Note 2: 6 Rank 2 Knights of Camelot are summoned at Rank 2.

Description: As King Arthur bled out on the Isle of Avalon, his last wish was to thank the noble swordsman who enlightened him on the treachery of his friend and wife. He divided a wisp of his soul into the Seal of Camelot, allowing that Swordsman to possess his greatest strength, his army, and the right to share in his blessing of eternal life on Avalon.

This Seal was infused with Origin Energy manifesting traits far stronger than what it was intended for. Now, the connection between the owner of this medallion of King Arthur is extremely sharp, allowing the summoned army to retain their memories and leave imprints on the world with every appearance.

Note: This item is soul bound. No one other than player Draco can wield it.｣

Draco breathed out slowly. These past few days had really tempered his state of mind and allowed his will to sharpen, as any common man would have been killed to death by all these boons.

The already ridiculously effective Sword of Promised Victory passive had more than tripled and now offered him a 50x multiplier. This was the same multiplier for the power level of the Super Saiyan transformation, so Draco’s swords might grow spiky blond hair and green eyes while shouting about how they wanted to kill Frieza very soon.

Alas, damage multipliers were useless if they were too high because each Rank had a damage cap. No matter how many overpowered existences like Draco would appear, each Rank had an upper threshold of damage and stats it could acquire/achieve.

This was why the overpowered passive of the Dragon Soul... er, Clarent... had been so useless back then. At Rank 1, his stats had been so low and his means so weak that it had gone to waste, until he acquired the Divine Class.

The Isle of Avalon passive was probably the most precious skill of this item, and was why Draco treasured it so greatly. After Ranking up just now, Draco had been more than happy to be able to ’cheat’ death four times a day and gain 6 seconds of invincibility.

Now, he could do this ten times a day and his invincibility lasted an entire minute! If he combined it with his transformation...

...yeah, whatever little chance this guy had of actually suffering a loss in combat had evaporated. Thankfully, even rats had him beat in the brain department, so intelligent enemies could play him to death! One day!

The first active, Camelot’s Might, had also gone through epic changes. Now, the duration was a whole week, instead of just a 1/4 of a day! A week! This meant that Draco could summon them for long-term expeditions, World Dungeons, or even Continental Dungeons!

Heck, he could summon the army and have them enter Divine or Legendary Dungeons while he lazed by the side waiting for the results. This was the epitome of broken!

The cooldown was humbling though, 1 month. Since that was 30 days, with Draco’s title slashing the cooldown, that would be around 15 days. This was manageable, as he couldn’t summon the army repeatedly for now.

Another boon was that the amount of Rank 2 troops had shot up from 150,000 to 500,000! Now Draco was certain that Arthur definitely did not have that many men for that final battle, but who cared?

500,000 Rank 2 troops... Draco could cause a lot of havoc with that in many situations, so he was truly excited. Not to mention that if all things went well, he would reach Rank 3 within 6 months after completing this treasury quest.

At that time, hehe. He and those two dolts, Qiong Qi and Clarent, would go around bullying everyone within eyesight in order to display their splendor and grace to the world!

Another interesting change was that his connection to Arthur would be more solid allowing the fellow and his group to retain their memories and leave their marks on the world.

What this meant was that if Arthur and co came to this world, and Draco gave them a... say, Dragon’s Blessing potion, the effects would appear the next time they were summoned.

At the same time, if Arthur was summoned and i.m.p.r.e.g.n.a.t.ed some babe within those 7 days, the woman would bear his child and Arthur would remember them the next time he was summoned.

It was a very great boon that Draco was pleased to acquire, as his feelings towards Arthur were complex. After all, they had been in the same boat once, only that Draco was lucky enough to receive a second chance to prevent anything from ever happening.

Arthur was not even half as lucky, and the edgelord phase of England’s most famous king would only come to an end as he bled out on the Isle of Avalon. If Draco could give him some form of closure before that moment in time, then he would count it as a major win.

Draco put away the Seal of Camelot and observed his other changes, primarily his Tradeskill Rank.

｢ Name: Draco

Class: Abyssal Prime

Race: Hybrid (Human/Ultima Sunt)

Rank: Lord (2)

Level: 52

Exp: 50%

Str: 100

Dex: 100

End: 100

Int: 70

Spr: 72

Cha: 70

Lck: 100

Combat Skills: Dragon Form (Rank 2), Demon Form (Rank 2), Devil Form (Rank 2), Necrotic Hands, Malevolent Spirit, Cruel Beast Summoning, Evil Curse, Life Steal, Divination, Sinister Shot, Dark Resurrection, Beckon, Subsume, Angel’s Blessing (Corrupted), Mind Blast, Charm.

Non-Combat Skills: Soul Bond, Charm, Insight, Foresight, Flexibility, Illusion, Confusion, Evolution, Ultimate Stealth, Pinnacle Intelligence, Species Shift, Dragobond, Aether Conversion, Devil’s Guile (Rank 2), Demonic Might (Rank 2), Draconic Superiority (Rank 2).

Tradeskills: Smithing (level 80, 99%), Alchemy (level 81, 0%), Enchanting (level 100, 0%), Magical Engineering (level 14, 15%), Scrivener (level 5, 30%), Privateering (level 1, 0%)｣

Draco nodded with satisfaction. Now that he had crossed the threshold, he knew that there were many subtle changes that had occurred which the system could not easily display.

Most of them would only be shown when he started concocting, so he went over to Pair Dadeni and paused for a bit. While he would certainly love to jump onto Blacksmithing and bring that to Grandmaster as well, he wanted to first consolidate his recent breakthrough.

As such, Draco decided to make an Epic potion to check on the disparity between being a Master Rank Alchemist and now that he was at the Grandmaster Rank.

Of course, he no longer needed to ’waste’ precious Epic materials, so he brought out some Darike Plants which were used for the health potions. He was stunned though, when a screen popped up before him.

｢System to Player Announcement

You are about to craft in a Tradeskill in which you have achieved Grandmaster Rank. Would you like to activate the Grandmaster interface?

Y/N ｣

Grandmaster interface? There was a specialized menu dedicated to Grandmasters for their respective Tradeskills? That was...

Draco quickly selected yes in order to see what this was about.

｢System to Player Announcement

Welcome to the Grandmaster Interface. This is a special mechanic of the system to cater to the few Grandmasters that exist in every Tradeskill, a privilege they have earned due to their talent, effort, and skill.

The interface can work in the background, but can only be activated when near a crafting tool of the respective Tradeskill in which the user is a Grandmaster of!｣

Draco read this and went on to observe the Grandmaster menu. He gasped when he saw the wealth of options presented to him, and all of them things beyond his comprehension.

There were 6 main choices. The first was an Auto-Craft option, the second was the Batch-Craft option, the third was called Recipe Gambling, the fourth was his Recipe Compendium, the fifth was a Craft Bag and the final was the Aesthetic Editor.

Draco checked each option in detail and learned what they were for. When he finished doing so, he had to spend a lot of time calming his dizzy mind.

The Auto-Craft feature allowed Draco to fully automate any crafting session. This was not the same as his Refined Star Technique in which he was actually crafting by splitting his mind.

This was direct magic. If he set it to craft any potion or poison, it would work on its own, like something straight out of a Harry Potter movie or similar to how the Aether Hall automated all its own maintenance.

However, there were some limitations and rules. The first was that this could only be done for Epic and below potions. Legendary potions would have to be handcrafted and go through the proper processes.

That should have been obvious though, as it would be too nonsensical otherwise.

The second rule was that the success rate was set by the Tradeskill Rank and titles only. Since the Grandmaster was obviously not crafting them himself, methods like energy infusion, special techniques, or whatnot would not apply. Neither would item effects like the Fire of War.

Only titles like Pioneer or the upgraded version, Inventor and Master Craftsman (Tier 2) would be of any use, as well as the base success rate which was 30% for Grandmasters.

Calculating it like this, Inventor gave a 15% success rate, Master Craftsman (Tier 2) gave 20% and the Tradeskill Rank gave 30%, meaning that he had a 65% success rate in total.

Not too shabby, but not that exemplary either. Draco suddenly regretted having underestimated the value of his Master Craftsman title. He wished he had more like it, or better yet, like the Inventor title that could boost his success rate for all crafts. Wouldn’t it be great if he could turn himself into an assembly line of Epic potions for his guild?

Luckily, since the Auto-Craft feature seemed to rely on the equipment of the Grandmaster, he could still benefit from Pair Dadeni’s reagent improvement and cut all costs!

Batch-Craft was self-explanatory. One inputted a slew of materials and set a batch size for auto-crafting. Auto-crafting could only handle one cauldron at a time, while batch-craft could multitask many in either different cauldrons or all in one.

The difference was that auto-crafting had a higher success rate due to the focused nature, while batch-crafting had a 50% success rate penalty on the Grandmaster’s specific success rate.

In essence, whatever final success rate the Grandmaster in question had, it would be cut in half. As such, it depended on the purpose of the Grandmaster, would they be willing to risk success for quantity or not?

Recipe Gambling was also self-explanatory. One could pay a variable fee in... you guessed it... Aether Crystals and run a few draws to gain new Epic or Legendary recipes, depending on their Luck and how much they invested into the draw.

It was like a watered-down version of the Wheel of Tradeskills, only that this menu’s limits were at maximum Legendary Rank, a far cry from the Altar of Crafting being able to easily spit out Semi-Divine and Divine items. Then again, Draco could try over and over again and Draco might have 99 problems, but Aether Crystals ain’t one.

Recipe Compendium was basically a system library of recipes he had ever created and learned, so that he could reference them whenever he wanted to. It was pretty simple and straightforward.

The Craft Bag, was a sort of special inventory exclusive for crafting items, where he could store almost limitless amounts of them without burdening his inventory or Bags of Holding.

According to the system, the Craft Bag was universal, so he could store any kind of material there and withdraw them whenever he liked, no matter the Tradeskill he was performing.

The Aesthetic Editor though, was just a simple editing tool to add logos, or insignias to items he personally made, as well as add some visual touch-ups for effect and branding.

All-in-all, this Grandmaster menu was truly something that justified why the system forcibly limited the number of Grandmasters in existence per Tradeskill.