Pillar of Yita

Reinforced gloves were also one of the strategic skills of the Supreme Choice School, and together with its prerequisite of Level D Enhanced Component Knowledge, it roughly also required one-third of the experience.

The primary function of the prerequisite Enhanced Component Knowledge allowed Invokers to use enhanced-related components and plugins, boosting the efficiency of similar devices. This skill was similar in other aspects to Basic Component Knowledge, so it wasn’t necessary to elaborate further.

However, when Fang Hong’s Enhanced Component Knowledge reached Level D, he once again chose the Colin Ishurian School.

This choice not only offered a synergistic bonus with the same school’s Basic Magic Guided Theory but also had a well-known advantage—Colin Ishurian adjusted costs by 30% when crafting related components, and the associated quality reduction was only 5%, which was an unparalleled advantage for non-essential components.

This advantage even led many Invokers from the Osh Empire to choose this school in Component Knowledge despite the synergistic penalty, so this choice was not hard to understand, especially since, as a Free Summoner, saving money was crucial.

Reinforced gloves, categorized as a special type of arm armor, were typically chosen by Combat Artisans who would concurrently practice as Fighters or Martial Monks.

But Fang Hong’s thought process was evidently different from the average person’s; not only did he not choose Fighters or Martial Monks, he didn’t opt for any powerful melee character, instead opting to learn Nightingale’s related skills from Parker—the series of skills related to using the claw hook.

He then devoted the remaining experience entirely to crafting-related skills—including Metallurgy, Thinking Outside the Box, and Rethinking Techniques—because whether it was crafting Dragon Knight Rigging or fulfilling his promise to Miss Hilveld, he needed to continue down the path of an Artisan Master.

Moreover, as a lone wolf, he didn’t have the luxury of a massive logistics team that Invokers from Grand Guilds had at their service.

For Alchemist Life Profession Practitioners, the early-phase skill level advancements were basically centered around the level of their core skill, ”Basic Magic Guided Theory.” However, a core skill typically implied extensive ramifications, for instance, the next level up in Colin Ishurian School’s Basic Magic Guided Theory involved skills such as Level E Metallurgy, Level E Potion Studies, Level E Botany, and Level D Mineralogy, along with not less than four pre-requisite knowledge and skills for crafting techniques.

Beyond the two crafting techniques provided by Level D Basic Magic Guided Theory—Cautious Creation and Fine-Tuning—Fang Hong naturally had to choose two more crafting techniques. He selected a commonly seen ”Rethinking” and another, more uncommon, ”Thinking Outside the Box.”

Rethinking was a mainstream skill in traditional artisan schools, primarily serving to pause during creation to relax the body and mind and restore some mental energy. This skill was also a crucial prerequisite for a slew of related skills and knowledge, fundamentally a must-choose for any Alchemist.

Thinking Outside the Box was a part-time skill from the Founder School, mainly used during crafting to potentially reduce the precision, hence the difficulty, of the blueprint at the expense of lowering the crafting precision. This often had a significant effect when the artisan crafted high-difficulty blueprints.

This skill was also beneficial to Fang Hong’s character level, which wasn’t particularly high, making it a doubly advantageous choice even in the current phase.

After learning the two crafting techniques, using the remaining experience to simultaneously advance to Level D Mineralogy, Level E Botany, and Metallurgy was nearly impossible, so Fang Hong chose Metallurgy, which was the most immediately useful to him.

Metallurgy enhanced the quality and crafting speed when artisans worked on metallurgy and metal-related equipment, and it had a synergistic effect with Forging, while also being one of the prerequisites for an important later stage knowledge in Artisan Masters—Metallography.

It was also fundamentally one of the essential knowledge every Artisan Master had to learn.

Once the remaining one-third of the experience was allocated, Fang Hong naturally reached halfway to Level 8.

In Eteliria, before the third tier, the experience requirement for Invokers increased every two levels. Levels five and six each required fifty thousand experience, while levels seven and eight required sixty thousand, so the two hundred twenty-two thousand cognitive experience was just enough for him to make this leap.

Indeed, because the auxiliary Nightingale job used combat experience, he ended up with more experience than expected, leaving him only twenty to thirty thousand experience shy of Level 9.

The increase in level also significantly boosted his attributes panel; since most of his learning involved knowledge and theoretical systems, the primarily affected attributes were intelligence and perception-related.

His intelligence rating jumped two levels from E- to E+, while his perception went from F to F+, with memory increasing by 19 points to 56 and computational power by 24 points to 79. Learning ability subsequently rose to 192%, and logical analysis modifier improved by 1%.

As for perception, language and perception each increased by 9 points, accuracy modifier accordingly rose to 31%, and learning ability modifier improved by 2%.

Nightingale-related experience primarily improved agility aspects; although the rating remained the same, basic speed and accuracy both increased by 5 points, while strength aspects improved by 2kg load-bearing and 1kg combat bearing.

Looking at his new attribute panel and abilities, Fang Hong roughly estimated his direct combat capabilities. He believed that without Miss Tata’s assistance, he could now match Atira, Parker, and Red Leaf.